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JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 



91 Biographical ^feetc^ 



BY 



FRANCIS H. UNDERWOOD 




BOSTON 
JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY 



^55 



Copyright, 1881, 
By Francis H. Underwood. 



University Press : 
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge. 



CONTENTS. 



Page 

Parentage and Family 4 

Birthplace and Surroundings 8 

Education 15 

His First Book . 18 

He becomes an Editor 20 

A Second Volume of Poems 22 

The Anti-slavery Revolution 28 

A Literary Retrospect 30 

The Anti-slavery Revolution moves on . . . 34 

Hosea Biglow 38 

Cambridge Fifty Years ago 49 

Marriage and Domestic Life ....... 54 

The Vision of Sir Launfal 59 

He attempts Satire 63 

Collected Poems. — University Lectures ... 71 

Conversations on the Poets 75 

Fireside Travels , „ 77 

His Second Marriage. — The "Atlantic" . . 80 

Hosea Biglow again 85 

Jonathan to John 87 

Fame , . 91 

Inside View of Secession 93 

Hosea becomes Pastoral and Idyllic .... 95 



vi CONTENTS. 

Page 

Parson Wilbur 97 

Yankee Humor and Pathos 100 

HosEA as an Orator 103 

"The Argymunt " 104 

Reconstruction 106 

The Decay of the Yankee Dialect 107 

Chaucer-Boccaccio Ill 

The Professor supplants the Poet 114 

Under the Willows 116 

Villa Franca 118 

For an Autograph 119 

Metaphysical Subtilty in Poetry 120 

Commemoration Ode 123 

Two Friends 125 

The Cathedral. — Conservatism 126 

Concord, Cambridge, Virginia . 133 

Classicism 133 

The Prose of Poets 137 

Lowell's Prose 140 

Gold in Quartz 144 

Personal Traits and Anecdotes 150 

The Whist Club 154 

Hints of Friendships 158 

A Character 162 

Edmund Quincy 164 

Begins Public Life at the Top 166 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 



James Russell Lowell Frontispiece 

Elmwood . See page 10 

Elmwood (Rear View) " "11 

Beaver Brook " "61 

The Mill Wheel . " "62 

The Waverley Oaks ........" "63 



JAMES EUSSELL LOWELL. 

A BIOGEAPHICAL SKETCH. 



oi«<o 



The essence of poetry eludes analysis, and 
like some of the forces of nature is known 
only by its effects. These effects are so va- 
rious that any uniform standard is impossible. 
At times poetry lurks in satire and in images 
of the grotesque; sometimes it 'swells in the 
fervor of religion or of patriotism ; sometimes 
it creates for itself an interior world, as the 
Inferno or the Paradise Lost; sometimes it 
expresses emotion in view of the beautiful 
or the sublime in nature ; again it shines in 
pictures of human life, as in the Canterbury 
Tales or the Arthuriad ; or it unfolds the 
mysteries of the soul and touches the uni- 
versal analogies, as in Shakespeare. 

1 



2 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

Since the time of Wordsworth, poets of the 
English race have been strongly influenced 
by natural scenery. The poets of old made 
7nan the subject of verse. Virgil wrote like 
a modern of woods and fountains, but in this 
respect he is alone. Homer knew the blue 
Olympus and the wooded Ida, and Horace 
could behold the snowy summit of Soracte 
from his Sabine farm; but all the " scenery" 
in the classical poems of antiquity (excepting 
the ^neid) would not make a page of a 
modern magazine. We have been having in 
our time a surfeit of landscape art, as in 
Wordsworth himself and in his followers, in- 
cluding Bryant and other Americans. Many 
modern poets have been scarcely more than 
literal scene-painters, and have neglected to 
put human figures in the foreground. 

Poetry reaches the soul through the in- 
tellect and through the emotions. Purely 
intellectual poetry may be in a sense '' clas- 
sic," but it has no life. Poetry makes men 
feel, rather than understand, and it suggests 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 3 

thoughts and emotions not expressed in words. 
As History is only ceremony and costume un- 
til genius connects it with the vital interests 
of the race, so the most artistic landscape is 
only a vapid picture of still-life until man ap- 
pears in it, informing it with his own hopes 
and fears. 

Poetry, in its essential quality, is disengaged 
from the products of the ordinar}^ mental facul- 
ties. It is something wholly apart, not a sum- 
mary nor an epigram. It never expounds, 
comments, nor exhorts. It teaches, if it 
teaches at all, by what it suggests, by sub- 
tile hints, and by apt parables. It is only a 
truism to say that poetry is the highest and 
rarest of the productions of mind. But few 
poets are wholly poetical, or "of imagination 
all compact." Some dross is fused with their 
gold. The temptation to discuss is very strong 
with men who live and bear their part in the 
world. And it has generally happened that 
great poetical conceptions have been born in 
loneliness or in darkness. 



4 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

The subject of this sketch is one of the 
most favorable examples of English descent 
and American culture. As he was born in a 
time of ferment, both as to literary and theo- 
logic dogmas, he was naturally influenced by 
the revival which the early part of this cen- 
tury witnessed. He has profited by the liter- 
atures of all nations, but he has been the 
disciple of no one literary master. His suc- 
cess in verse is fairly matched by his brilliant 
and poetical prose ; and while he is eminent 
among scholars, he is at the same time capa- 
ble, discreet, and distinguished among pub- 
lic men. The events of the times in which 
he has lived, and the changes that have taken 
place in his own sphere, as will be seen here- 
after, have affected in various ways the pro- 
ductions of his pen. 

PAEENTAGE AND FAMILY. 

The Lowells are descended from Percival 
Lowell of Bristol, England, who settled in 
Newbury, Mass., in 1639. In the ancient 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 5 

records of the colony the name is written 
Lowle, The family has been distinguished 
in every generation. Francis Cabot Lowell 
(1775-1817) was among the first to perceive 
that the wealth of New England was to come 
from manufactures, and it was for him that 
the city of Lowell was named. John Lowell 
(1743-1802), an eminent judge, was the au- 
thor of the section in the Bill of Rights, by 
which slavery w^as abolished in Massachu- 
setts. John Lowell, Jr. (1799-1836), was 
the founder of the Lowell Institute in Boston. 
This great public benefaction, which provides 
annual courses of free lectures, was estab- 
lished by a bequest of $250,000 in the testa- 
tor's will, written by him while on the summit 
of the great pyramid. He was travelling in 
the East, and died not long after at Bombay. 
Another John Lowell is at present a judge 
of the District Court of the United States. 
Charles Lowell (1782-1861), a distinguished 
divine, was the fatlier of the poet. 

The Russells have also an honorable name 



6 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

in the colony. Richard Russell, from Here- 
fordshire, settled at Charlestown in 1 640, and 
became a prominent man. His son James 
bore a manful part in the trying- times of 
1G88-9, and was all his life in positions of 
trust. 

The Lowells have been men of solid char- 
acter, earnest, high-minded, philanthropic, and 
possessed of strong practical abilities. The 
genius for poetry, manifested by the subject 
of this sketch and by his brother Robert, was 
apparently derived from the maternal line. 
Dr. Charles Lowell married Harriet Spence, 
a native of Portsmouth, N. H., belonging to 
a Scotch family, descended perhaps from Sir 
Patrick Spens, celebrated in the old ballad. 
A dim tradition to this effect exists, but of 
course without the possibility of verification. 
The mother of Harriet Spence was named 
Traill, a native of one of the Orkneys.^ 

Mrs. Harriet Spence Lowell had a great 

^ The reader remembers Magnus Troil in Scott's novel, 
" The Pirate." Troil and Traill are the same. 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 7 

memory, an extraordinary aptitude for lan- 
guages, and a passionate fondness for ancient 
songs and ballads. She had five children : 
Charles, Robert (the Rev. Robert Traill 
Spence Lowell, an eminent author and poet), 
Mary Lowell Putnam, Rebecca, and James 
■Russell, — the subject of our memoir, who 
was the youngest, born j^eb. 22, 1819. 

Dr. Lowell was a man of sterling good 
sense, high principles, strict ideas of duty and 
honor, and with strongly practical views of 
life. The children were reared in the plain 
style that prevailed in New England sixty 
years ago. They also had their inner senses 
cultivated by the influence of their mother. 
They were nurtured with romances and min- 
strelsy. The old songs were sung over their 
cradles, and repeated in their early school 
days, until poetic lore and feeling (foreign 
grafts in many minds) were as natural to 
them as the bodily senses. So in right think- 
ing and livhig, and in study and attainment, 
they had a noble example in one parent, 



8 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

while the appreciation of the beautiful came 
to them tlirougli tlie other. Mary Lowell 
Putnam, born in 1810, is a lady of 'sin- 
gular mental vigor and of unusual acquire- 
ments, and is the author of several important 
works. The other daughter, Rebecca, died 
in middle age, unmarried. Charles, who died 
at Washington about ten years ago, was a 
man of superior attainments, and the father 
of two brilliant young men, Colonel Charles 
Russell Lowell and Lieutenant James Jack- 
son Lowell, both killed in our late civil war. 
Mrs. Putnam's only son, Captain William 
Lowell Putnam, was killed also in the disas- 
trous affair of Ball's Bluff, in the early part 
of the war. 

BIRTHPLACE AND SURROUNDINGS. 

It seldom happens in this country that a 
lifetime passes without change of residence; 
but, except during his visits abroad, the poet 
has always lived in the house in which he 
was born. 



o 
o 

o 




A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 9 

Elmwood, though not very ancient, has an 
mteresting history. The house was built by 
Peter Oliver, who was stamp distributer just 
before the outbreak of the Revolution. It 
will be remembered that, being waited upon 
by a Boston committee " of about four thou- 
sand," and requested to resign his obnoxious 
office, Oliver hurriedly complied, and shortly 
after left the country. The house was next 
occupied by Elbridge Gerry, an eminent 
man in his day, from whose crooked plan of 
districting, the political term " gerrymander- 
ing " was derived. After his death it became 
the property of Dr. Lowell, about a year 
before the birth of the poet. It is of wood, 
three stories high, and stands on the base 
line of a triangle, of which the apex reaches 
nearly to the gate of Mount Auburn Ceme- 
tery. The ample grounds have an abundant 
growth of trees, most of them planted by 
the prudent Doctor as a screen from the 
winds. There are a few native elms ; but 
those which give the name to the estate are 



10 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

English, sturdy as oaks, standing" in front of 
the house. In front, also, are large and 
beautiful ash trees. 

In the deep space at the rear, in the old 
days, there was perfect seclusion ; it used to 
seem like the stillness of the woods. The 
slopes of Mount Auburn, beautiful with na- 
tive growths, and not then covered by fan- 
tastic caprices in marble, are separated only 
by a narrow street. Dwellings were not 
numerous or near. All around the enclosure 
a gigantic hedge stands like a jagged silhov- 
ette against the sky. This lofty hedge is 
made up of a great variety of trees ; it 
bristles with points of tufted pines ; it is set 
at mid-height with thrifty and elbowing wil- 
lows and dense horse-chestnuts ; and beneath 
it is filled in with masses of slu-ubs. In the 
area are broad grassy levels, with a few 
pear and apj)le trees, and nearer the house 
are younger pines, elms, firs, clumps of 
lilacs, syringas, fleurs-de-lis, gorgeous rugs of 
striped grass, and other ornamental growths, 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. H 

disdained by modern gardeners, but immortal 
in the calendars of poets. 

Elm wood is full of birds, — robins and 
their homelier cousins, the brown thrushes, 
swallows, blue-birds, flaming orioles, yellow- 
birds, wrens, and sparrows. The leafy cov- 
erts are inviolate, and some of the tenants, 
even tlie migratory robins, keep house the 
year round. All are perfectly at home, and 
they appear to sing all day. On summer 
evenings, after the chatter of the sparrows 
has ceased and the robins have sung for cur- 
few, you may hear the pee-ad of night-hawks, 
and the hoarse voices of herons and other 
aquatic birds, as they fly over from Fresh 
Pond or the neighboring marshes. 

During the lifetime of his father the poet 
occupied as a study tlie south front room in 
the upper story. 

Many years have passed since that period, 
and many changes have occurred in the 
landscape (and in the beholder !). Perhaps 
the description which follows may be far 



12 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

from true to-day. Hills have been dug 
down, and their gravelly sides left bare. 
Straggling- groups of houses have here and 
there crei^t out on the wet marsh. Tlie 
horse-cars have frightened away most of the 
birds, and almost put to flight the poetical 
associations. But still faithful memory re- 
calls the prospect, and in her tablets it shines 
now as it did so long ago. In those treas- 
ured pictures w^e see the distant view from 
the study windows in their varying aspects. 
The view is broad and panoramic, compris- 
ing portions of Brighton, Brookline, and 
Roxbury, and ending on the left with the 
dome of the State House in Boston. The 
nearer view, over the neighboring lawns, 
includes the Charles and the marshes. The 
sluggish river winds through tracts of salt 
meadow, now approaching camj^s of medita- 
tive willows, now creeping under '' cater- 
pillar bridges," and now turning away from 
terraced villas and turfy promontories. In 
summer the long coils of silver are set in a 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 13 

ground of green that is vivid and tremulous 
like watered silk ; in autumn the grasses are 
richly mottled purple, sage, and brown ; and 
the play of sunlight and sliadow, while the 
winds are brushing the velvet this way and 
that, gives an inimitable life to the picture. 

The study contained about a thousand 
volumes of books, a few classic engravings, 
water-color paintings by Stillman, Roman 
photographs, a table with papers and letters 
in confusion, and a choice collection of pipes. 
Over the mantel was a panel, venerable and 
smoky, that had been • brought from the 
house of one of the ancient Lowells in New- 
bury, on which was painted a group of 
clergymen in their robes, wigs, and bands, 
seated about a table, each enjoying a long' 
clay pipe. On an arch above an alcove was 
this legend in Latin: ''In essentials, unity; 
in • non-essentials, liberty ; in all things, 
charity." 

This picture, though scarcely a work of 
art, is interesting for the light it throws upon 



14 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

the social customs of the clergy of the last 
century. 

This room was for many years the delight- 
ful resort of a few friends, especially on 
Sunday afternoons. 

After tlie death of Dr. Lowell, the libraries 
were brought together in two connected 
rooms on tlie lower floor. The new study 
was more spacious and convenient ; but the 
precious and undying associations, and the 
beautiful outlook, belonged to the upper 
chamber. 

The house throughout is an example of the 
picturesque. In the hall are ancestral por- 
traits (one bearing the date of 1582) ; busts 
of Dr. Charles Lowell and his father; a 
stately Dutch clock ; and Page's Titianesque 
portraits of the poet and his wife in their 
^'^outhful days. Tlie prevailing tone of the 
rooms is sombre, but the furniture is antique 
and solid, such as would make a covetous 
virtuoso unhappy for life. Books are every- 
where, mostly well chosen standard works in 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 15 

various languages, including a liberal pro- 
portion of plays and romances. 



EDUCATION. 

The nearest neighbor to Elm wood in 1825 
was William Wells, who kept a boys' school, 
and from him the poet got most of his early 
education. He was for a time, however, pupil 
of Mr. Daniel Gr. Ingraham, who had a highly 
successful classical school in Boston. Mr. 
Wells was a thoroughly educated English- 
man, who had been a member of a publish- 
ing house in Boston, — Wells & Lilly. They 
published excellent books ; among them, well 
edited Latin classics. At that time, when 
Lieut. -governor Armstrong was making his 
fortune out of the " Life of Harriet Newell " 
and "Scott's Family Bible," the Wells & 
Lilly classics were neglected, and were sold 
for trunk linings. The disheartened pub- 
lisher went to Cambridge to diffuse classical 
learning in a humbler way. Many distin- 



16 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

guished men were indebted to Mr. Wells for 
their early training-. He was a teacher of 
the old school, — erudite, formal, and severe ; 
and it is said that the use of the cane, upon 
refractory or idle pupils, was not then one of 
the lost arts. 

Mr. Lowell entered Harvard College in 
his sixteenth year, and was graduated in 
1838. Among his classmates and friends 
were Charles Devens, a general in our late 
war, afterwards a judge of the Supreme 
Court of Massachusetts, and lately the Attor- 
ney Greneral of the United States ; the Rev. 
Eufus Ellis ; the late Professor Nathan Hale ; 
the Hon. George B. Loring, M. C. ; William 
W. Story, the sculptor and poet; Professor 
H. L. Eustis; the Rev. J. I. T. Coolidge ; 
Professor W. P. Atkinson ; and others less 
known to fame. The Rev. E. E. Hale was 
in the class following. 

His rank in scholarship was not a matter 
of pride. He has been used to say that he 
read almost everything, — except the text- 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 17 

books prescribed by the faculty. To certain 
branches of study, especially to mathematics, 
he had an invincible repugnance. His wide 
and multifarious reading was the efficient 
fertilization of his mind. Learning, in its 
higher sense, came later. The voyages, 
travels, romances, poems, and plays he de- 
voured were a better aliment for a poet than 
the regulation diet of Harvard. His was 
a nurture such as Cervantes, Spenser, and 
Shakespeare received. Though eminent and 
able in many ways, Lowell remains abso- 
lutely a poet in feeling. His native genius 
was fostered by the associations of a singu- 
larly beautiful home ; it was nourished by 
the works of the dramatists, — masters of 
emotion and expression, — by the ideal pic- 
tures of poets and novelists, and by the 
tender solemnity of the discourses of his 
father and of Channing, and others of his 
father's friends. Nature and the early sur- 
roundings had been alike favorable ; and 
though he was not a rhyming prodigy like 

2 



18 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

Pope, lisping in numbers, his first effusions 
as he came to manhood were in poetic form. 

After leaving College, Lowell entered the 
Law School, and having finished the pre- 
scribed course, took his degree of LL.B. in 
1840. He opened an office in Boston, but 
it does not appear that he ever seriously 
engaged in the practice of law. It is true he 
wrote a story for the "Boston Miscellany" 
entitled " My First Client," but that may have 
been a mythical person. The Rev. Mr. Hale 
salys that his brilliant future was prefigured 
in his youth, — that his original genius was 
evident from the first. 

HIS FIEST BOOK. 

A little before his twenty-second birthday 
he published a small volume of poems, en- 
titled '' A Year's Life." The motto was from 
Schiller : Ich Jiabe gelebt unci geliebet ; concern- 
ing which it may be said that most young 
men appear to have reached the maturity of 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 19 

having '' lived and loved" at a comparatively 
early period. The poems are naturally upon 
the subject that inspires youths of one-and- 
twenty ; and though they do not, many of 
them, appear in the author's ''complete" col- 
lection, they are by no means unworthy of 
consideration. They bear a favorable com- 
parison with the ''Hours of Idleness" and 
other first-fruits of genius. The reader is re- 
ferred to " Irene," " With a Pressed Flower," 
and " The Beggar." The imnamed lady 
who is celebrated in the poet's verse, and 
who afterwards became his wife, was Miss 
Maria White, a person of delicate and spirit- 
ual beauty, refined in taste, sympathetic in 
nature, and the author of several exquisite 
poems. Although most of the pieces in " A 
Year's Life " have been set aside by the 
severer judgment of the poet, the student 
will discover in them many intimations of 
the genius that shone out more clearly in 
later days. But contemporaries seldom have 
the interpretation which comes later with full- 



20 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

blown success. Margaret Fuller, in " The 
Dial," wrote disparagingly of the verses, say- 
ing that neither their imagery nor their music 
was the author's own. 

HE BECOMES AN EDITOR. 

In the landscape of letters, dead magazines 
are the ruins, often more pathetic than pic- 
turesque. Many a young author has felt a 
shock at the downfall of his castle, and fortu- 
nate is he who is not crushed under it. In 
January, 1843, appeared the first number of 
the ^' Pioneer," a magazine of moderate size, 
handsomely printed, and illustrated, after the 
fashion of the time, with steel engravings. 
'^ J. R Lowell and Robert Carter " were 
announced as " Editors and Proprietors." 
Three numbers only were issued before the 
publishers failed. The magazine was too 
purely literary to be successful. The num- 
bers are now exceedingly scarce, and would 
bring an almost fabulous price. Imagine a 
magazine with articles by Byron, Shelley, 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 21 

Coleridge, De Quincey, and Vathek-Beck- 
ford ! In these three numbers are two of 
Hawtliorne's incomparable stories, '' The 
Birthmark" and ''The Hall of Fantasy;" 
essays upon Beethoven, by John S. Dwight ; 
able articles by John Neal ; an Oriental tale 
by Carter; and articles by Lowell on old 
plays, and the song writers. But the wealth 
of the magazine was in its poetry ; so many 
famous people w^ere never enlisted in any 
one enterprise before or since. Besides the 
numerous and beautiful contributions of the 
editor, there were poems by Miss E. B. Bar- 
rett (afterwards Mrs. Browning), Edgar A. 
Poe, Whittier, W. W. Story, T. W. Parsons 
(a name that is to endure), Jones Very (dain- 
tiest of sonneteers), and George S. Burleigh. 
Poe's poems were "The Telltale Heart" and 
the well-known " Lenore." Whittier's was 
entitled "Lines Written in the Book of a 
Friend : " — 

" On page of thine I cannot trace 
The cold and heartless commonplace, 
A statue's fixed and marhle grace," etc. 



22 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

Parsons contributed poems upon "The Hud- 
son River," ''The Shadow of the Obelisk," 
and "The Tower of Pisa." Story was Hke 
Mercutio, a loyal and brilliant second, writing 
both in prose and verse, and furnishing de- 
signs for the engraver. 

On the whole, the "Pioneer" was a re- 
markable periodical, and its only fault was 
that it was far above the comprehension of 
the general public of forty years ago. 

Before this, Lowell had written some very 
striking literary essays for the " Boston Mis- 
cellany," conducted by his classmate and in- 
timate friend, Nathan Hale. 

A SECOND VOLUME OF POEMS. 

About three years after the publication of 
"A Year's Life" appeared another volume 
of poems well known to readers of to-day. 
"The Legend of Brittany" and " Prometheus" 
are the longest; but the most popular are 
"Rhoecus," "The Shepherd of King Ad- 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 23 

metus," " To Perdita Singing," " The For- 
lorn," ''The Heritage," "A Parable," etc. 

The matter and the manner of this volume 
were new and not wholly pleasing to the 
American public of 1844. As we look back 
and consider the taste of that public, we can- 
not indulge in any great pride. There were 
undoubtedly literary circles in each of the 
principal cities, in which authors and works 
were estimated with conscientious care ; but 
the general tone was low. The Tityrus of 
the herds, as Lowell afterwards styled him, 
was Doctor Griswold. An hour's study of 
his volumes is better than a sermon on the 
vanity of human wishes, or a lament over the 
perishable nature of literary fame. 

There were a few names held in honor 
then that are still more honored noiv. Long- 
fellow was in the first flush of well-won fame : 
men had begun to name him in the same 
breath with Bryant, the recognized chief of 
the bards. Willis was the Count D'Orsay 
of letters, the arhiter elegantiarum. Holmes 



24 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

was thought to be a bright and Avitty young 
man of considerable promise. Whittier was 
talked of, but 23eople said he was prostituting 
his muse in the service of fanatics. His lyrics, 
they thought, had some fire, but an abolition- 
ist, of course, could not be a poet. The re- 
tributive tar-kettle would befit him rather 
than the exhilarating tripod. The first genius 
of our time — at least among romancers — 
was absolutely unknown. The " Twice-Told 
Tales" had been published (1837, 1842), and 
scarcely a thousand co|)ies had been sold. 
Pierpont's odes were shouted by schoolboys, 
and the din of the rhymes on Public Satur- 
days was like the riveting of steam-boilers. 
Poe's "Raven" was just about making its 
sequacious and tantalizing lament. Halleck 
was the American Campbell. John Neal and 
Pichard H. Dana were great poets, and were 
sure — some day — to produce something 
worthy of their fame. "Woodman, Spare 
that Tree!" "The Old Oaken Bucket," and 
" Home, Sweet Home," had filled the cup of 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 25 

national glory full. Mrs. Sigourney, Mrs. 
Hale, Miss Gould, and Mrs. Welby were 
quoted with Mrs. Barbauld and Mrs. Hemans. 
Editors then seemed perclied on loftier 
heights than now. The Philadel]3hia maga- 
zines, in particular, were thought to be won- 
derful works of genius and art. Those 
magazines in which music strove with milli- 
nery, and poetry was entangled with worsted 
patterns, and whose plates were fine enough 
for perfumery labels, represented a power and 
influence with the ingenuous youths of 1844, 
which the sober " Atlantic " and the versatile 
" Harper" have never since wielded. Poems 
admitted into those elegant repositories of the 
arts were already classic. To be sure, the 
admiring reader at times had some qualms ; 
as when, for instance, he learned that a spring 
gushed "like a fountain of soda," and then 
saw that the hard-pressed poet was forced to 
lug in " Godey " for a rhyme. But then, this 
might be playful. 

The revolution in letters has scarcely be- 



26 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

gun. Pope was still greater than Homer; 
Byron was grander than Milton's Satan ; 
Scott was the only romancer of the ages ; 
Wordsworth was a dull proser, who took a 
pedler for his hero and an idiot for the sub- 
ject of his pathos. Tennyson was an air}^ 
and effeminate stripling, who had a pleasing 
trick of rhyme, and who was properly casti- 
gated by Bulwer as 

" Out-babying Wordsworth and out-glittering Keats." 

In Lowell's verse there was something of 
Wordsworth's simplicity, something of Ten- 
nyson's sweetness and musical flow, and some- 
thing more of the manly earnestness of the 
Elizabethan poets ; but the resemblances were 
external ; the individuality of the poet was 
clear. The obvious characteristic of the 
poems is their high religious spirit. It is 
not a mild and passive morality that we per- 
ceive, but the aggressive force of primitive 
Christianity. The vivid conception of the 
law of love and of the duties of brotherhood 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 27 

reminds its of the time when such thoughts 
were new and starthng, and before their vital 
power had been lost in chanted creeds and 
iterated forms. 

There are several of the poems in this col- 
lection wdiich now seem prophetic. They 
were bold utterances at the time, and vrere 
doubtless considered as the rhapsodies of a 
harmless enthusiast. The ode beginning — 

" In the old days of awe and keen-eyed wonder 
The poet's song with blood- warm truth was rife," 

may be regarded in one aspect as a confession 
of faith. In force of thought and depth of 
feeling, and in the energy of its rhythmic 
movement, it is a remarkable production, 
whether for a poet of twenty-five or older. 
Perhaps it is more rhetorical in its energy 
than maturer taste would approve. It is so 
compact that a summary is impossible ; but 
it announces in sonorous strains that the mis- 
sion of the poet, like that of God's prophets, 
is to attack wrong and oppression, to raise 
up the weak and reclaim the erring, and to 



28 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

bring heaven to men. He decries the bards 
who seek merely to amuse, and deplores their 
indifference to human welfare. 

" Proprieties our silken bards environ : 

He wlio would be the tongue of this wide land 
Must string his harp with chords of sturdy iron, 
And strike it with a toil-embrowned hand." 

This stirring ode was a fit prelude to the 
part our poet was to perform. If there were 
any doubt as to the application, the grand 
sonnet to Wendell Phillips, in the same vol- 
ume, gives it emphasis. 

THE AISTTI-SLAVERY REVOLUTION. 

There are poets whose verse has no re- 
lation to time. ^^ Drink to me only with 
thine eyes" might have been sung by any 
lyrist from Anacreon to Algernon Swin- 
burne. Others, like Dante, Milton, Marvell, 
and Dryden, who live in times when strong 
tides of feeling are surging to and fro, — ■ when 
vital principles are in controversy, and the 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 29 

fate of a people hangs upon the sharp deci- 
sion of the hour, — find themselves," whether 
they would or no, in the place of actors, — at 
once causes and products of the turmoil in 
which they are born. 

Probably there were never greater changes 
in the ideas, habits, and welfare of any civil- 
ized people in any half century than were 
brought about in the Northern States during 
the fifty years from the date of the poet's 
birth. This may appear to be an unnec- 
essarily strong statement, but it will bear 
scrutiny. That half-century witnessed the 
astounding changes which followed the ap- 
plication of steam, electricity, and the arts 
to practical affairs. In the same period the 
bulk of our literature was produced ; and the 
press, too, became a power before unknown 
in this or any country. Legislation and juris- 
prudence were lifted into the light of morals. 
Organized benevolence, taking upon itself 
the burdens of society, began to make the 
Golden Rule an active principle in human 



30 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

affairs. In fifty years, the United States liad 
outrun the usual progress of centuries. 

Europe, too, witnessed great changes in 
the same period, but they chiefly related to 
material things. England and France had lit- 
eratures, arts, societies, and traditions. The 
United States, as a nation, had none. 

Somewhere in our account of the author 
we should glance at his intellectual lineage, 
and trace his relations to the thinkers and 
thoughts of his age. 

A LITERAEY RETROSPECT. 

It is sometimes said of a neglected genius 
tliat he is born out of time. But this can 
never be. As ihQ fauna of any epoch find 
the fit conditions of sustenance, so the intel- 
lectual conditions of any period are the ones 
appointed for the growth of mind in that 
time. As the poet embodies in his verse, not 
only his love of nature and religious feeling, 
but also the results of philosophy and art, 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 31 

he must be considered in connection with the 
dominant ideas of his time. The English, 
who say we have no poetry, are disappointed, 
probably, in not finding- some flavor of 
strangeness, like that of a wild duck, or some 
daring novelty of form, as in the prophecies 
of Walt Whitman ; forgetting that for the 
most part we are still British, though under 
new conditions, and that, with our heritage 
and traditions, there could be expected from 
New World singers only slight variations 
from ancestral strains. Our colonists repre- 
sented a high average of English ability and 
cultivation. Their history shows their blood 
to have been of the best. Yet in the wilder- 
ness literary art languished, and taste was 
perverted. There was no poetry on the 
manifest of the "Mayflower" or of the ^' Ar- 
bella ; " it had been left behind with Eng- 
land's larks and daisies. A century passed 
before the savage forests had lost their ter- 
rors and the homes of the settlers began 
to bloom in beauty. Neitlier prose nor 



32 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

verse flourished until after the revolutionary 
war. 

Our recognized literature began with Bry- 
ant and Irving; but its real sources were 
in Channing, his associates and disciples, or 
rather in the intellectual movement that fol- 
lowed the decline of ecclesiastical rule. 

Channing, so far as he was a conscious 
agent, was a mild-tempered agitator, remark- 
able for nobility of character and for a spiritu- 
ality that was almost angelic. The revolution 
he led was against the dominant theology, 
but the influence was felt by millions who 
never accepted the new doctrines. Clerical 
limitations became obsolete. People redis- 
covered Shakespeare, as amateur astrono- 
mers discover Jupiter ; for the works of the 
chief of poets had before this been unknown 
to Puritan libraries. It was found that there 
were writers and thinkers who were not 
wearers of Geneva ba,nds. Channing him- 
self was no longer shut up in a remote 
corner, but was welcomed into the fraternity 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 33 

of lettered men. Until Ms essays on Milton, 
Fenelon, and Napoleon appeared, European 
scholars had never thought of America ex- 
cept in connection with savages, fish, furs, 
and rebelHon. The breadth and force of 
tliis movement can scarcely be overesti- 
mated. Excepting Irving, Cooper, and Poe, 
there has not been an American author of 
high rank in this century whose intellectual 
lineage is not traceable, directly or indirectly, 
to Channing and Emerson. 

A new light emanated from Nature; or 
rather the hills, rivers, and lakes were seen 
with anointed eyes. Religion, as well as 
literature, was secularized, though the spirit 
of Christianity was still supreme. In the 
course of time, Christianity got new appHca- 
tions, and later, democracy had new and 
startling definitions. The contest had be- 
o-un, which in due time was to wash out the 
color line with blood. Story and poem, 
history and essay, national in tone and 
, with vital characteristics, gave new life to 



34 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

society and new lustre to the American 
name. 

It was in the springtime of the new 
thought that our poet was born. 

THE ANTI-SLAYERY REVOLUTION MOVES ON. 

The function of the critic, as Mr. Stedman 
has pointed out, is to anticijoate the solid and 
dispassionate judgment of posterity upon the 
works of to-day, — a task sufficiently diffi- 
cult, for the critic himself may be enslaved 
by the literary fashions which he ought to 
resist and deplore. No one can say what 
may be the standard of taste a century 
hence ; for it cannot be known what direc- 
tion it will receive from some unborn master- 
spirit, who will dominate his age. But in 
regard to the fundamental laws of ethics 
there cannot be any retrogressive movement. 
So much is sure. 

And to a man in the twentieth century, 
looking back, what will appear the great fact 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 35 

of our time^ Indubitably tlie fulfilment 
of the democratic idea in the abolition of 
African slavery. It is the most important 
event since the discovery of America. The 
schemes of Bismarck, Gortschakoff, and Bea- 
consfield, or even the gigantic crimes of 
Napoleon, are mere games of chess in com- 
parison. Yet the time has been when such 
an opinion would not have been tolerated in 
polite society. The evil was intrenched in 
law, defended by statesmen and poHtical 
economists, apologized for by clergymen, 
and made respectable by custom. Like its 
kindred oppressions, absolutism and caste, 
(for which we trust Fate has an end at once 
effectual and peaceful), slavery was adorned 
by the fictile graces of romance and the false 
glamour of poesy. The anti-slavery move- 
ment has been lately classed with isms by 
those who see no deeper than the surface 
of things, as if it were a fashion, like that 
of bran bread; but it was such an ism as 
Christianity, or Democracy, or International 
Peace, or Human Brotherhood. 



36 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

The position of Lowell was fixed from the 
beginning". The teachings of Channing and 
of his father, the doctrines of the New Tes- 
tament, and the example of his grandfather 
(author of the liberty clause in our Bill of 
Rights), all pointed in one direction. He 
became an abolitionist when the name signi- 
fied a fanatic and fool. He did not, however, 
continue long with the theorists who believed 
the road to universal freedom must be laid 
over the ruins of the Constitution, but joined 
with those who meant to extirpate the evil 
by legal means. 

The sincerity and the unflinching zeal of 
the anti-slavery leaders are not to be ques- 
tioned, but in the nature of things they were 
scarcely entertaining. Their discourses were 
seldom enlivened by wit or humor. It was 
an awful ''burden" they bore. One would 
as soon expect a joke from Jeremiah. Of lit- 
eral sarcasm and downright blows there were 
plenty. It is noticeable, also, that in the 
first two volumes of Lowell's poems there is 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 37 

not a single witticism, nor a hint of the comic 
power that was to place him among the first 
of humorists and satirists. In his " Conver- 
sations on the Poets," now out of print and 
scarce, there are many keen strokes and ludi- 
crous comparisons, like those in later books 
with which the public has become familiar. 
In the " Conversations" we see more of the 
natural man ; in the early poems we see the 
decorous bard in the proprieties of cere- 
monial robes. One might believe that the 
brilliant raillery which Lowell afterwards 
turned upon the supporters of slavery had 
its origin in a reaction from the monotonous 
oratory of some of his associates. The pub- 
lic, which could bear a great deal of argu- 
ment upon the national sin, unmoved, was 
found to be keenly sensitive to the corus- 
cations of wit, and sorely vulnerable to the 
arrows of ridicule. 

In the summer of 1846, the Mexican war 
was in progress, and the abolitionists were 
urging (what is now accepted as the truth of 



38 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

history) that it was waged to obtain new 
territory for the extension of shivery, and 
thereby to counterbahance the growing- power 
of the Northern States. President Polk had 
been elected to carry out the scheme. The 
appeal was to Congress, through the con- 
science of the nation, to stop the supplies. 

HOSEA BIGLOW. 

Mr. Lowell wrote a letter in June to the 
^' Boston Courier," purporting to come from 
Ezekiel Biglow, enclosing a poem in the 
Yankee dialect, written by his son Hosea, 
in which the efforts to raise volunteers in 
Boston were held up to scorn. 

" Thrash away, j'ou '11 hev to rattle 
On them kittle-drums o' yourn, — 
'T aint a knowin' kind o' cattle 

Thet is ketched with mouldy corn." 

Society was puzzled. Critics turned the 
homely quatrains over with their talons as 
kittens do beetles, shook their wise ears, and 
doubted. Politicians thought them flat or 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 39 

vulgar. Reverend gentlemen, who had not 
been shocked at the auction of '' God's hxi- 
ages in ebony," considered the poet profane 
and blasphemous. But the epithets stuck 
like burrs. The lines were jingling every- 
where. For the first time in the history of 
the movement the laugh was on the side 
of the reformers. The peculiarities of some 
of the more eccentric had furnished the wag-s 
heretofore with material for abundant gibes. 
The long curls of Absalom Burleigh, the 
masculine declamation of Mrs. Abby Kelley 
Foster, the sledge-hammer action of Henry 
C. Wright (perhaps the original of Haw- 
thorne's Hollingsworth ?), the white woollen 
garments, patriarchal beard, and other-world 
looks of Father Lamson, and the pertinacity 
of the meek lunatic, Abby Folsom, had made 
every meeting of the New England Anti- 
Slavery Society as rare a show for the baser 
sort as a circus or a negro concert. Now 
the leading men in church and state were 
stung by pestilent arrows. Great names 



40 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

were no protection. The unanswerable ar- 
guments of Garrison and the mag-nificent 
invectives whicli Wendell Pliillips had hurled 
at well-dressed mobs were now supplemented 
by the homeliest of proverbial phrases, set to 
the airiest, lilting rhythm, adorned with the 
choicest and most effective slang, and ting- 
ling with the free spirit that had animated 
a line of fighting Puritans since the time of 
Naseby. The anti-slavery music was in the 
air, and everybody had to hear it. 

The more cultivated of the abolitionists 
were in ecstasies. Some, however, did not 
quite understand it. Tlie levity of tone 
hardly accorded with the prophetic burdens 
they had been used to. When Charles 
Sumner saw the first Biglow poem in the 
'' Courier," he exclaimed to a friend, '' This 
Yankee poet has the true spu-it. He puts 
the case admirably. I wish, however, he 
could have used good English ! " 

Hosea Biglow kept up the warfare, and 
each poem was furnished with a preface and 



w 



^ 



< 




A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 41 

notes by an imaginary Parson Wilbur. 
First, a Mexican-war recruit gave liis amus- 
ing experiences from the field. Then came 
'' What Mr. Robinson Thinks." This tickled 
the public amaznigly, and 

" John P. 
Robinson lie 
Sez he want vote fer Guvener B.," 

was in every one's mouth, like the "What, 
never?" of "Pinafore." Mr. Robinson was 
a refined and studious man, unhappily on the 
wrong side of a moral question, and was not 
a little annoyed by his " bad eminence ; " but 
he is preserved in the Biglow amber, like 
an ante-Pharaonic fly. There is a ludicrous, 
though perhaps mythical story, that he went 
abroad, to get out of hearing the sound of his 
own name. As soon as he landed at Liver- 
pool, however, and got to his hotel, he heard 
a child in an adjoining room idly singing. 
He hstened. Yes, it was true ; the detested 
refrain had got across the ocean. It was 

" John P. 
Robinson he " 



42 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

that the baby-ruffian Avas trolling. He sailed 
to the Mediterranean, and stopped at Malta. 
While looking at the ruins of the works of 
the Templars he observed a party of English 
not far distant, and presently another infan- 
tile voice sang 

" Bi:t John P. 
Robinson he 
Sez they did n't know everythin' down in Judee." 

About this time the late Dr. Palfrey, the 
historian, tlien an able and eloquent member 
of Congress, had refused to vote for Mr. 
Winthrop, the Whig candidate for speaker. 
Hosea Biglow gave expression to the party 
wrath in a burlesque version of a speech suj)- 
posed to have been delivered at an indigna- 
tion meeting in State Street. This was the 
opening : — 

" No ? Hez he 1 He haint, though ? Wut 1 Voted agin him ? 
Ef the bird of our country could ketch him, she'd skin him ! " 

*^A Debate in the Sennit, sot to a Nusry 
Eliyme" followed; then ''The Pious Editor's 
Creed," and a burlesque of General Taylor's 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 43 

letter accepting tlie nomination for the presi- 
dency. The first letter from Birdofredmii 
Sawin, the Mexican volunteer, created great 
merriment on account of its local hits, espe- 
cially those relating to Caleb Gushing, the 
eminent publicist, who was at that time a 
general in command. Many of the finest 
touches are lost upon readers of to-day. The 
second letter of the series is probably the 
most fluent, adroit, and effective. The writer 
had been sadly mutilated, ill-treated, and dis- 
illusioned. He had imagined Mexico as a 
country 

" Ware propaty grovved up like time, witliout no cultivation. 
An' gold wuz dug ez taters be among our Yankee nation, 
Ware nateral advantages were pufficly amazin', 
Ware every rock there wuz about with precious stuns wuz 

blazin', 
Ware mill- sites filled the country up ez thick ez you could 

cram 'em 
An' desput rivers run about a beggin' folks to dam 'em." 

The temptation to quote is strong, but there 
must be a limit. Every couplet contains 
some fehcitous absurdity or hard hit. The 



44 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

volunteer finally descants upon his own mer- 
its and available qualities, and offers himself 
as a candidate for President under tlie sohrl- 
qiiet of " The One-ej^ed Slarterer." In a third 
letter, the last of the first series, Mr. Sawin 
withdraws in favor of ^'01' Zack" (General 
Taylor). 

The poems were finally gathered into a 
volume, which in comic completeness is with- 
out a parallel. The ''work" begins with 
" Notices of the Press," which are delightful 
travesties of the perfunctory style both of 
"soft-soaping" and of "cutting up." There 
happening to be a vacant page, the space was 
filled off-hand by the first sketch of " Zekle's 
Courtship : " — 

" Zekle crep' up, quite unbeknown, 
An' peeked in thru the winder, 
An' there sot Huldy all alone, 
'ith no one nigh to hender." 

This is the most genuine of our native idyls. 
It affects one like coming upon a new and 
quaint blossoming orchid, or hearing Schu- 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 45 

mann's Einsame Blume. Its appearance in 
the "Biglow Papers" was purely an acci- 
dent ; but it had the air of being an extract, 
and it was so greatly admired that the poet 
afterwards added stanzas from time to time 
to fill out the picture. In the original sketch 
there were six stanzas ; there are now twenty- 
four. Some of the added stanzas are fully 
as picturesque and striking as those in the 
original improvisation. This is the first : — 

" God makes sech nights, all white au' still 
Fur 'z you can look or listen, 
Moonshine an' snow on tield an' hill, 
All silence an' all glisten." 

Of the progress of Zekle's passion he says : — 

" But long o' her his veins 'ould run 
All crinkly like curled maple, 
The side she breshed felt full o' sun 
Ez a south slope in Ap'il." 

Of Huldy's nature : — 

*' For she was jes' the quiet kind 
Whose naturs never vary, 
Like streams that keep a summer mind 
Snowhid in Jenooary." 



46 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

There is a burlesque advertisement in Latin 
of one of Mr. Wilbur's projected works pre- 
ceding the titlepage. The title itself is a 
travesty reminding one of the days of black- 
letter quartos. The head-line is '' Meliboeus 
HiPPONAx," as much as to say, ''This is a 
horse-eclogue." A note informs us of the po- 
sition of Mr. Wilbur in the learned world, 
and refers us to some scores of (imaginary) 
societies to which he belongs. Tlie Introduc- 
tion gives some account of the poet, Hosea 
Biglow, and quotes specimens of his serious 
verse ; and it may be said here that these 
supposititious fragments are equal to the best 
descriptive poetry of our time. The editor 
goes on to discuss the Yankee dialect and its 
pronunciation, and at length loses himself in 
a maze of genealogical notes and queries. 

The notes and comments of the grave and 
erudite parson are difficult to characterize. 
One sees that he is professionally solemn and 
pedantic, and often ridiculous in adhering to 
obsolete modes of spelling and to old-fash- 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 47 

ioned ways. In eveiy i^age there are striking 
thoughts, as well as a profusion of imagery 
and an affluence of learning; but there is 
also a quaint flavor of antiquity, as if the 
honey of his periods had been gathered from 
the flowers of Jeremy Taylor, Sir Thomas 
Browne, and holy George Herbert. Noth- 
inof finer or more characteristic is to be found 
in any of LoAvell's varied and splendid writ- 
ings. 

Look, for example, at the episodical sketch 
of the newspaper, — as graphic as the best 
of Carlyle's, — or at the picture of the army 
recruit, who is enlisted the morning after a 
debauch. 

In the course of the volume the parson de- 
lineates himself, until he becomes a charac- 
ter as real and as charming as the most 
enduring creations of English fiction. To 
parody one of the poet's own couplets : — 

And " Wilbur " -won't go to oblivion quicker 
Than Adams the parson, or Primrose the vicar. 

Which of the dear and stately black-robed 



48 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

visitors of Elmwood sat for this unrivalled 
picture it may not be wise to inquire ; but 
all the lettered folk above fifty, in Boston 
and Cambridge, think tliey have known him. 
The creations of genius, like Colonel New- 
come and Don Quixote, are entities ; while 
historical characters, such as George IV. and 
Philip IL, may be only shadows. 

The '' Biglow Papers " end appropriately 
with a comic glossary and index. It must be 
repeated, by way of emphasis, that, from the 
first fly-leaf to the colophon, this is the only 
complete and perfect piece of grotesque com- 
edy in existence. 

In time, historical notes will be needed, as 
they are now for Hudibras. That the Yankee 
satire is to be enduring, there can be no doubt. 
Its total merits greatly outweigh those of 
Hudibras ; it has far more humor, and more 
quotable lines ; and it has a great advantage 
in its unique concomitants. 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 49 

CAMBEIDGE FIFTY YEAES AGO. 

As the Yankee peculiarities of tlie " Biglow 
Papers " are evidently fresli studies, it might 
appear strange tliat tliey could be wrought 
out by a resident of Cambridge. The vis- 
itor to-day sees magnificent college buildings, 
broad streets filled with carriages and trav- 
ersed by horse-cars, and comfortable resi- 
dences that testify to wealth and luxury. 
There is still space for gardens and trees, and 
for open squares and trim lawns ; but the tone 
is urban. If Cambridge is in any respect 
rural, it is not in the least rustic. The prime- 
val Yankee has become scarce everywhere ; 
he is hardly obtainable as a rare specimen ; 
he is a tradition, like the aurochs or the great 
bustard. He and his bucolic manners and 
speech are utterly gone. There is not the 
echo of a ha'div in any of the pretentious 
Itahan villas, — nor even in the heavy-tim- 
bered mansions, hke that of Lowell's friend, 
a. N., dating from 1656. The " W. I. Goods " 

4 



#' 



50 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

store, with clusters of farmers' teams in front, 
has yielded to the " march of improvement." 
Oxen are as strange as camels, and if there 
were a milkmaid to be found, her hands would 
smell of mille-fleurs or imtclioiiU. As soon 
expect the return of Jacob and Rachel as to 
see again the originals of the poet's ZeMe and 
Huldy. 

The old town as it was in Lowell's boy- 
hood is sketched with rare humor and fine 
touches in an article by him, published in 
" Putnam's Monthly" in 1853, entitled " Cam- 
bridge Thirty Years Ago." It is in the form 
of a letter addressed to the " Edelmann 
Storg ; " namely, to W. W. Story, the sculp- 
tor, Lowell's classmate and intimate friend, 
whose name a Swiss innkeeper had once so 
misread. 

This charming^ essay, brimming with feel- 
ing and full of the graces that delight culti- 
vated readers, shows Lowell himself in his 
early maturity in the most striking way. 
Later essays may be more profound, but 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 51 

none of them are so full of the sunshine of 
the heart. In this masterly picture we see a 
country village, silent and rural. There are 
old houses around the bare common, ''and 
old women, capped and spectacled, still 
peered through the same 'windows from 
which they had watched Lord Percy's ar- 
tillery rumble by to Lexington." One coach 
sufficed for the travel to Boston. It was 
" Sweet Auburn " then, a beautiful woodland, 
and not a great cemetery. The " Old Eoad " 
from the Square led to it, bending past Elm- 
wood. Cambridgeport was then a "huckle- 
berry pastur'," having a large settlement of 
old-fashioned taverns, with vast barns and 
yards, on the eastern verge. " Great, white- 
topped wagons, each drawn by double files 
of six or eight horses, with its dusty bucket 
swinging from the hinder axle, and its grim 
'bull-dog trotting silent underneath, . . . 
brought all the wares and products of the 
country to Boston. These filled the inn- 
yards, or were ranged side by side under 



52 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

broad-roofed sheds ; and far into the night the 
mirth of the histy drivers clamored from the 
red-curtained bar-room, while the single lan- 
tern, swaying to and fro in the black cavern 
of the stables, made a Eembrandt of the group 
of ostlers and horses below." 

Commencement was the great day, to 
which the Governor came in state, with 
military escort. The annual muster of the 
militia, which took place sometimes at Cam- 
bridge and sometimes in other neighboring 
towns, brought together all the boys of the 
county to see the various shows and the 
hilarious sport called a '' Cornwallis." 

If you look at the people, you ob- 
serve strongly marked social distinctions. 
The humbler classes toiled, and were not 
ashamed of it. They did not ape the man- 
ners of the college circle, nor the luxury ot 
the wealthy. 

The provincial tone was evident. You 
have only to talk with an old Bostonian 
even now to see how it was. The old 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 53 

leaders of society had a little of the mock 
majesty of Beranger's Boi d^Yvetot But the 
main thing was, that, up to 1830, the manners 
and speech of ordinary folk were those of 
the seventeenth century. The rustic Yankee 
was then a fact. In fifty years, by the aid 
of steam and electricity, Boston became a 
modern city, on equal terms with the Old 
World, a centre of itself, and Cambridge was 
developed into a highly cultivated suburb. 
The rusticity, leisure, humor, and homespun 
naturalness were gone. The changes of two 
hundred years went by in a lifetime. 

Recalling old Cambridge by the aid of 
Lowell's reminiscences, we see how the ver- 
nacular idioms and the humorous peculiarities 
of the people are so naturally reproduced in 
his comic verse. No poet of a later day 
could have evolved such creations, so perfect 
in nature and dress, so thoroughly identi- 
fied with the antique world. The acquaint- 
ance with the primeval Yankee, begun in the 
old town, was extended afterwards by visits 



54 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

to the Adirondacks and to Moosehead Lake ; 
and though many artists have made striking- 
and effective sketches of this vanished origi- 
nal, — notably Mrs. Stowe and Mrs. Rose 
Terry Cooke, — it is the belief of the writer, 
whose boyhood was passed among the most 
perfect native specimens of the race, that 
Lowell has surpassed all rivals in depicting 
him. This opinion is not based upon the 
" Biglow Papers " alone. '' Fitz Adam's 
Story," of which something will be said 
hereafter, is the flowering of Yankee humor 
and the visible soul of '^ Down East." 

MARRIAGE AND DOMESTIC LIFE. 

Mr. Lowell was married, December 26, 
1844, to Miss Maria White of Watertown, 
near Cambridge. His domestic life at Elm- 
wood, like the "peace that passeth under- 
standing," could be described only in simile. 
It was ideally beautiful, and nothing was 
wanting to perfect happiness but the sense of 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 55 

permanence. Mrs. Lowell was a lovely and 
accomplished woman, but was never very 
strong, and her ethereal beauty seemed too 
delicate for the climate of New England. 
Children were born to them, but all died 
in infancy, excepting a daughter (now Mrs. 
Edward Burnett). Friends of the poet, who 
were admitted to the study in the upper 
chamber, remember the pairs of baby shoes 
that hung over a picture-frame. From the 
shoes out through the southwest window to 
the resting-place of the dear little feet in 
Mount Auburn there was but a glance, — a 
tender, mournful association, full of unavail- 
ing grief, but never expressed in words. 
Poems written in this period show the depth 
of parental feeling. Readers remember " The 
Changeling" and " She Came and Went." 

" As a twig trembles, which a bird 

Lights on to sing, then leaves unbent, 
So is my memory thrilled and stirred ; — 
I only know she came and went." 

Mrs. Lowell was a writer of sweet and 



56 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

beautiful verse. One of her poems, "Tlie 
Alpine Slieep," addressed to a sorrowful 
mother, was suggested by her own bereave- 
ment. 

" They in the valley's sheltering care 

Soon crop the meadow's .tender prime, 
And when the sod grows brown and bare 
The shepherd strives to make them climb 

" To airy shelves of pasture green 

That hang along the mountain's side, 
Where grass and flowers together lean, 

And down through mist the sunbeams slide. 

"But nought can tempt the timid things 
The steep and rugged paths to try, 
Though sweet the shepherd calls and sings, 
And seared below the pastures lie, 

" Till in his arms their lambs he takes 
Along the dizzy verge to go : 
Then, heedless of the rifts and breaks, 
They follow on, o'er rock and snow. 

" And in those pastures, lifted fair, 
More dewy-soft than lowland mead, 
The shepherd drops his tender care, 
And sheep and lambs together feed." 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 57 

Mr. and Mrs. Lowell went to Europe in 
a sailing vessel in the summer of 1851, and 
spent a year, visiting Switzerland, France, 
and England, but living for the most part 
in Italy. They returned in the autumn of 
1852. Mrs. Low.ell was slowly, almost im- 
perceptibly, declining. Her fine powers Avere 
almost spiritualized, and the loveliness of her 
nature suffered no change by disease. 

" A blissful vision througli the night 
Would all my happy senses sway 
Of the good Shepherd on the height, 
Or climbing up the starry way, 

■" Holding our little lamb asleep, — 
While, like the murmur of the sea, 
' Sounded that voice along the deep, 

Saying, 'Arise and follow me! '" 

The end came in October, 1853, when like 
a breath her soul was exhaled. 

Nine years of wedded life had passed, with 
loss and sorrow, and often clouded with 
apprehension, but blessed also by the ten- 
derest joys permitted to mortals. 



58 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

On the cliiy of Mrs. Lowell's death a child 
was born to Mr. Longfellow, and his poem, 
" The Two Angels," perhaps as perfect a 
specimen of his genius as can be cited, will 
remain forever as a most touching expression 
of sympathy. 

" 'T was at thy door, O friend ! and not at mine, 
The angel with the amaranthine wreath. 
Pausing, descended, and with voice divine 

Whispered a word that had a sound like Death, 

" Then fell upon the house a sudden gloom, 
A shadow on those features fair and thin: 
And softly, from that hushed and darkened room. 
Two angels issued, where but one went in." 

Mrs. Lowell's poems were collected and 
privately printed in a memorial volume, with 
a photograph from Page's portrait ; but many 
of them have been widely copied and be- 
come a part of our literature. 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 59 



THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL. 

After the brilliant success of the '' Biglow 
Papers," it might have been supposed that 
Lowell would have continued to produce 
comic verses ; but it would seem that he had 
not been satisfied with his early serious 
poetry, and was conscious of the power of 
accomplishing better results. His next im- 
portant effort was '' The Vision of Sir Laun- 
fal," a noble poem, full of natural beauty and 
animated by higli Christian feeling. This 
was composed in a kind of fury, substantially 
as it now appears, in the space of about forty- 
eight hours, during which time the poet 
scarcely ate or slept. It was almost an im- 
provisation, and its effect upon the reader is 
like that of the outburst of an inspired singer. 
The effect upon the public was immediate 
and powerful ; the poem needed no herald 
nor interpreter. In later poems we may ob- 
serve more highly wrought imagery, more 



60 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

Dantesqiie sugg-estion, and more pliilosopliic 
depth; but ''Sir Laimfal" is still the poem 
most admired by general readers, and it is 
the one that best shows the poet's fresh and 
exuberant feeling-, his native piety, and his 
glowing sense of beauty. Every summer 
the newspapers remind us how '' rare " is 
" a day in June," and every winter we read 
how 

" Down swept the chill wind from the mountain peak, 
From the snow five thousand summers old." 

The preludes of the two movements of the 
poem have become typical in the minds of 
our generation. 

About the same period came " The Pre- 
sent Crisis," an ardent poem, in a high, 
prophetic strain, and in strongly sonorous 
measure. This has been often quoted by 
public-speakers, and many of its lines are 
as familiar as the most trenchant of the 
Proverbs : — 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 61 

" By the light of burning heretics ^ Christ's bleeding feet I 
track." 

" Truth forever on the scaffold, "Wrong forever on the throne." 

" Then to side with Truth is noble when we share her wretched 
crust." 

" For Humanity sweeps onward : where to-day the martyr 
stands, 
On the morrow crouches Judas with the silver in his hands." 

But the whole poem is a Giant's-Cause- 
way group of columnar verses. It is a pity 
to pry out specimens ; they stand better to- 
gether. 

Mention should be made of " Ambrose," 
a beautiful legend, with a lesson of tolera- 
tion ; of " The Dandelion " and " The Birch 
. Tree," both charming pictures, and already 
hung in the gallery of fame; and of '^An 
Interview with Miles Stan dish," a strong 
piece of portraiture, with a political moral. 
But of the poems of this period, the most 
artistic is ''Beaver Brook." There is no 
finer specimen of an ideal landscape in mod- 

' Observe that Thomas Hughes has not quoted this cor- 
rectly, but has printed " martyrs " for " heretics." 



62 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

ern verse, — a specimen rich enough in its 
suggestions to serve as an object-lesson upon 
tlie poetic art. Beaver Brook, whose valley 
was a ftxvorite haunt of the poet, is a small 
stream in the present limits of the town of 
Belmont, a few miles from Elmwood, not 
far from Waverley Station. The mill exists 
no longer, but one of the foundation walls 
makes a frame on one side for the pretty cas- 
cade of 

" Armfuls of diamond and of pearl," 

that descends into the "valley's cup." Not 
far below is a jDasture, in which are the 
well-known Waverley Oaks, one of the few 
groups of aboriginal trees now standing near 
the Massachusetts coast. If a bull be per- 
mitted, the largest of the oaks is an elm, now 
unhappily dying at the roots. This tree has 
a straight-out spread of one hundred and 
twenty feet, — sixty feet from the giant trunk 
each way The oaks are seven or eight in 
number, as like as so many stout brothers, 
planted on sloping dunes west of the brook. 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 63 

They have a human, resolute air. Their 
great arms look as if ready to '' hit out 
'from the shoulder." Elms have their grace- 
ful ways, willows their pensive attitudes, firs 
their loneliness, but the aboriginal oaks ex- 
press the strength and the rugged endurance 
of nature. The oaks have been often painted, 
but there are many ways of looking at them, 
all equally charming. 

,HE ATTEMPTS SATIRE. 

Mr. Lowell's next venture was asrain in 
the field of satire. "A Fable for Critics," — 

" A Glance at a Few of oi;r Literary Progenies 
(Mrs. Malaprop's word) from the Tub of Diogenes," — 

was 

" Set forth in October, the 31st day, 
In the year '48, G. P. Putnam, Broadway." 

As one looks back, — for 1848, though 
it seems but yesterday to some of us, was 
really a great while ago, — one hardly knows 
whether to be more, amazed at the audacity 



64 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

or the brilliancy of this elaborate jeu d^esprit 
The preface declares : — 

"I began it, intending a Fable, a frail, slender 
thing, rhymey-winged, with a sting in his tail." 

There was no doubt about the sting in 
the minds of those who felt it ; but private 
grievances have been forgotten, excej^t per- 
haps by the friends of a celebrated woman 
between whose renown and whose works 
there remains an unaccountable discrepancy. 
To bring up the representative authors of a 
vain and touchy people for censure (using 
the word in its broad original meaning) was 
an undertaking of some difficulty and deli- 
cacy. But when allowance is made for the 
humorous and sportive tone of the Fable, 
and we get at the real critical opinions, 
either singly or in mass, it is surprising to 
see how the poet anticipated the taste of 
the coming generation, and how sound and 
appreciative, according to present standards, 
his judgments are. Naturally there may be 




Beaver Brook. 

See page 6i. 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 65 

undue warmth here and a sliade of coohiess 
there, but there is a general equity and candor. 
And we must remember that, by and by, the 
honeyed comphments that are exchanged be- 
tween hving writers are to be forgotten, — 
that poems and histories are to be scrutinized 
Hke coins by money-changers, and reckoned 
at their just vahie and no more, and that 
then will begin the havoc with reputations 
now foi'tified behind friendly reviews and 
journals, and fostered by social, political, 
and religious cliques. Not one in ten of the 
popular writers of an epoch can hope to be 
remembered and read by the next ; and it 
will be found hereafter that Lowell's Apollo 
was perhaps more generous than severe in 
his comments upon the literary procession. 

The Fable is as full of puns as a pudding 
of plums. The good ones are the best of 
their kind, strung together like beads, and 
the bad ones are so '^ atrocious " as to be 
quite as amusing. Materials for any number 
of Hoods exist in it. Verbal sparkles catch 

. 6 



66 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

the eyes of youth ; but tliose who see deeper 
find vigorous good sense, power of analysis 
and illustration, as well as manly indepen- 
dence and just national pride, such as few 
comic poets possess. The successive pages 
seem like a series of portraits, done by an 
artist who knows how to seize upon the 
strong points of likeness and avoid carica- 
ture ; and that is to produce living pictures 
in the style of the masters. 

The reader who has had his volume by 
him since that thirty-first of October knows 
it by heart ; the judgments are established, 
and their curious felicity of phrase always 
haunts the memory. Emerson, for example, 
is the subject of a keen and almost per- 
fect characterization. If the satirist laughs 
(as he may), the reader hesitates to join in 
the mirth ; for he feels the resistless force, and 
sees that the gayety is only the myrtle bough 
that covers a sword. Similar praise may be 
given to the powerful sketch of Theodore 
Parker, although that great preacher was 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 67 

more tender and more profoundly religious 
than lie appears in Lowell's verse. Alcott, 
'^ calm as a cloud," and the graceful Willis 
are happy specimens. To Bryant the satirist 
is perhaps scarcely just, — although the cold- 
ness of that great poefs passive muse, and 
the want of elasticity and sympathy in his 
nature, must be acknowledged. There is 
more enthusiasm in the picture of 

"Whittier, whose swelling and vehement heart 
Strains the strait-breasted drab of the Quaker apart." 

The lyrical fervor of the verses harmonizes 
with the conception of the beloved and ven- 
erated bard. 

Hawthorne is limned with touches so fine 
and aerial that one scarcely sees how it is 
done ; yet the likeness and the style are in- 
imitable. It is a delicate tribute from one of 
the first of poets to the most original and 
imaginative of romancers. The estimate of 
Cooper, if not wholly complimentary, is mag- 
nificently wrought. The lines are imbedded 
in thought, and resist change and time. 



68 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

One of the most cliarming of these (appar- 
ently) off-hand descriptions is that of Pliilo- 
thea, Mrs. Lydia Maria Child, the ablest 
woman in America in her prime. There is 
an airy lightness in the treatment of this 
author that has the effect of wit in action. 
The tale of the ^' marvellous aloe " is a suffi- 
cient instance of the genius of the author. 
Imagine a commonplace writer attempting to 
fashion such an illusory legend ! 

For Irving and for Poe perhaps Lowell's 
Apollo is no more than just; and as for 
Judd, although his (neglected) " Margaret" 
is a work of genius, probably our author 
means to assert what his fame should have 
been, rather than what it is. Holmes and 
Longfellow are generously mentioned, and 
Lowell's own verse comes in for ironical com- 
pliment. 

The character of " Miranda" has been sup- 
posed by some to be intended as a caricature 
of Margaret Fuller. If this were true, it 
would be an instance of unusual severity, for 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 69 

the passages in which "Miranda" figures, 
though among the most amusing, are terribly 
sarcastic. Such a woman as the Minerva of 
the Fable, if there were one, might fully 
deserve the treatment. Miss Fuller never 
minced her words, and she always scorned 
the shelter of sex ; but, though she had some 
traits that drew upon her as inuch censure as 
compliment, it is not at all probable that 
"Miranda" was drawn for her, any more 
than the sketch of the dull and pedantic 
reviewer was intended for a well-known 
Harvard professor. "Miranda" is undoubt- 
edly an imaginary female literary bore. 

Of the various episodes there is no room 
to write. Readers will see that the poet was 
still zealous for human rights, strongly op- 
posed to the horrors of capital punishment, 
and energetic in upholding the honor of the 
republic of letters. And all who trace their 
origin from Pilgrim or Puritan ancestry will 
feel a new thrill of pride in the glowing 
apostrophe to Massachusetts with which the 
poem ends. 



70 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

The Fable appeared anonymously, but 
sucli a secret could not be kept. When 
people had time to think about it, it was 
evident that no other American could have 
written it. No poem of the kind in the lan- 
guage equals it in the two aspects of vivid 
genius and riotous fun. The Fable careers 
like an ice-boat. Breezes fill the light sails, 
as if toying with them ; but the course is like 
lightning, and every movement answers to 
the touch of the helm. 

No British poet has equalled it. Think of 
the dirt of the Dimciad and the whooping 
savagery of the English Bards and Scotch 
Bevieiversf Yet " Fraser's Magazine" consid- 
ered the Fable as " clever doggerel." 

But when the Fable is calmly surve3^ed, 
though we admit the fervid genius that ani- 
mates it, and though we are sure that no 
other poet could have written it, or ap- 
proached it in comic or serious power and 
swiftness, still we must see that it carries 
along- like a flood a considerable burden of 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 7I 

" inconsidered trifles." There is a lack of 
proportion and of just treatment here and 
there which might have been remedied by the 
labor of revision. It seems like an off-hand 
sketch, with all the brilliant points and some 
of the defects that characterize first thoughts 
hurriedly set down. 

COLLECTED POEMS. —UNIVERSITY LECTURES. 

In 1849 Mr. Lowell's poems were collected 
in two volumes; the '' Biglow Papers," "A 
Fable for Critics," and ^' A Year's Life " were 
not included. In 1853, and for some years 
afterwards, he was a frequent contributor to 
"Putnam's Monthly," conducted by George 
William Curtis and Charles F. Briggs. Some 
of his finest productions, both in prose and 
verse, appeared in that brilliant periodical. 
In the winter of 1854-55 he delivered a course 
of twelve lectures on English poetry, in the 
Lowell Institute. The lectures made a deep 
impression upon cultivated auditors, and full 



72 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

reports of them were printed in the Boston 
" Advertiser." Their success was due to their 
intrinsic merits. The po^^ular lecturer is often 
led to imitate the vehement action of a stump 
orator and the drollery of a comedian by 
turns. Mr. Lowell's pronunciation is clear 
and precise, and the modulations of his voice 
unstudied and agreeable ; . but he seldom, if 
ever, raised a hand for gesticulation, and his 
voice was kept in its natural compass. He 
read like one who had something of impor- 
tance to utter, and the just emphasis was felt 
in the penetrating tone. There Avere no 
oratorical climaxes, and no pitfalls set for 
applause. But the weighty thoughts, the ear- 
nest feeling, and the brilliant poetical images 
gave to every discourse an indescribable 
charm. The younger portion of the audi- 
ence, especially, enjoyed a feast for which 
all the study of their lives had been a prepa- 
ration. 

It is probable that by this time our poet 
had begun to think of some connection with 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 73 

the University. The ilhistrious professor of 
helles lettres, it was known, desired to retire 
from the chair, and pubhc opinion pointed to 
Lowell as a proper person for his successor. 
In the summer of 1854 Mr. Longfellow re- 
signed, and Mr. Lowell was appointed in his 
place, with leave of absence for two years. 
He went to Europe to pursue his studies, and 
remained abroad, chiefly in Dresden, until 
the spring of 1857, when he returned and 
began his courses of lectures. No profes- 
sor was ever more j)opular with his classes. 
Students speak of him always in terms of 
admiration and love. His lectures upon 
Dante, Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Cervantes, 
in particular, have made an ineffaceable im- 
pression upon the scholars of Harvard. 

In the two years of residence abroad, he 
had time for much methodical reading, par- 
ticularly in the literatures of modern Europe ; 
but, in truth, the studies which made him a 
distinguished scholar had been begun long 
before, and have been pursued ever since. 



74 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

His power of assimilation has been even 
more remarkable than his facility of acqui- 
sition. The best things in all tongues natu- 
rally gravitated to him ; and it was difficult 
for any but the most curiously learned to say 
whether he seemed more at home with the 
philosophic authors of Germany, the great 
poet of Italy, the immortal romancer of 
Spain, the brilliant wit and classic finish of 
the French, or with the long line of poets, 
chroniclers, and thinkers of our old home. 
His resources were ample for almost any un- 
dertaking. His characteristics as a writer of 
prose will be considered in the proper place ; 
but it may be observed here that, along with 
his varied studies, he had early cultivated, 
unconsciously perhaps, a learned, rich, and 
allusive style, — singularly apt and forcible, 
and teeming with poetic illustrations. 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 75 

CONVERSATIONS ON THE POETS. 

The germs of his literary criticism are 
to be found in his '^ Conversations on the 
Poets," published in his twenty-fifth year. 
The book is a valuable part of his literary 
biography. The sentences give an impres- 
sion of prolixity at first, not so much of words 
as of teeming, struggling thought. They at- 
test the yet untrained luxuriance of genius. 
The doctrines are of the modern school, in 
opposition to the formal antithesis and the 
superficial glitter of Pope and his French 
masters, and in favor of the simplicity 
and vigor of the Elizabethan authors, and 
of Chaucer. A good part of the volume 
is devoted to the modernization of pas- 
sao-es from Chaucer, and to comments upon 
Spenser, Shakespeare, Chapman, Drayton, 
Ford, Marlowe, and other dramatic poets. 
Marvell is also a favorite, and Jeremy Tay- 
lor is dwelt upon with a poet's enthusiasm. 
Of the moderns, he appears to hold Keats 



76 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

and Tennyson in liigliest esteem, tliougli tlie 
strens-tli and naturalness of Wordsworth are 
admitted. We make room for a few sen- 
tences : — 

" You may claim for Pope the merit of an envi- 
ous eye, which could turn the least scratch upon 
the character of a friend into a fester, — of a 
nimble and adroit fancy, and of an ear so nig- 
gardly that it could afford but one invariable 
caesura to his verse ; but when you call him 
poet, you insult the buried majesty of all earth's 
noblest and choicest spirits. Nature should lead 
a true poet by the hand, and he has far better 
things to do than to busy himself in counting the 
warts upon it, as Pope did." 

" Pope treated the English language as the 
image-man. has served the bust of Shakespeare 
yonder. To rid it of some external soils he has 
rubbed it down till there is no muscular expres- 
sion left." 

" A poet could not write the ' Dunciad,' nor 
read it." 

The citations are given for the opinions, 
not as specimens of the style. 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 77 

From the time of the Conversations (1845) 
to that of the first lectures (1855) there was 
a marked change, but only the change from 
adolescence to manhoo{i. It was the normal 
development of an active, original, and poetic 
mind. Even the matter of the lectures un- 
derwent a change before being presented to 
the public, fifteen years later. Only a small 
part of the critical labors has been printed, 
but the most important subjects have been 
elaborated into the stately essays which form 
the last three volumes of prose. 

FIRESIDE TRAVELS. 

The volume of " Fireside Travels," con- 
taining the sketch of old Cambridge already 
mentioned, was published in 1864. The ar- 
ticles were written when Lowell was thirty- 
four, a mature young man, chastened and 
thoughtful, but still joyously young. It was 
the period when fi-esli feeling was in the 
ascendant, and when the poet had no in- 



78 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL: 

clination to exchange the creative pencil 
for the scalpel of the critic. Tliere is a tide 
in the soul of man, and it comes neither too 
early nor too late in life, — a time when the 
poet or artist is at his best, — hand and 
brain and heart at one. The youth con- 
ceives, but often fails adequately to embody 
the creation. The veteran would gladly ful- 
fil his soul's behest, but the feeling has gone 
with the visions of his mornino-. The en- 
thusiasm and creative power belong to young 
blood. What the ardent youth achieves may 
lack the maturer graces, but it will be in his 
springtime, if ever, that he will put his ideas 
of beauty into enduring forms. 

'' Fireside Travels," among prose works, is 
the product of Lowell's best days. It is ex- 
uberant, but not in the least crude. In fact, 
the art is quite as remarkable as the fertility. 
Pages appear like the soil of hot-house beds, 
with thoughts, serious, jocose, learned, allu- 
sive, sprouting everywhere. It does not 
matter where the reader opens, for every 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 79 

sentence has some salient or recondite charm. 
The Italian journals, the life in the Maine 
woods, and the reminiscences of Cambridge 
are equally fascinating. As mere studies of 
a highly ornamented style they are perfect. 
It is true that in graver essays Lowell has 
displayed more profundity, more learning, 
and more grand figures ; but those who 
know the earlier volume well will surely 
turn to it oftener. The sketches of President 
Kirkland, Professors Popkin and Sales, and 
of Allston the painter, and others, — all too 
brief, — are not only delightful in style, but 
are full of warm and generous feeling that 
knits author and reader henceforth in an 
indissoluble bond. One often wonders, after 
reading of the Cambridge dons for the twen- 
tieth time, where there is to be found another 
essay like it. In Thackeray's essays there 
are points of resemblance. The ^'Rounda- 
bout Papers," " The Four Greorges," and the 
''Enghsh Humorists," though totally differ- 
ent in matter and in style, give a similar 



80 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

inward satisfaction. A comfortable feeling 
remains long after the verbal felicities have 
been enjoyed and passed out of remem- 
brance. 

HIS SECOND MARRIAGE. — THE "ATLANTIC." 

Two important events in his life occurred 
in 1857. Mr. Lowell was married in Septem- 
ber to Miss Frances Dunlap, of Portland, 
Maine, who had had charge of the education 
of his only daughter during his residence 
abroad. For a time he resided in Oxford 
Street, Cambridge, with Dr. Estes Howe, 
who had married a sister of Maria White 
Lowell; but not long after he returned to 
Elmwood. 

In November, "The Atlantic Monthly" 
was started under the auspices of the chief 
authors of New England, with Mr. Lowell as 
editor-in-chief. One purpose of the maga- 
zine was to give the active support of letters 
to the anti-slavery cause, and in this respect 
its position was decided. Before this there 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. gl 

was no popular magazine with positive opin- 
ions. Tlie editor's contributions were both 
in prose and verse, and were conspicuous for 
their force, and often for their pungent wit. 
At the beginning, the political articles were 
written by an eminent author of New York, 
but after a time the department was managed 
by the editor alone. 

In less than two years from the time the 
''Atlantic" was started, both the senior mem- 
bers of the publishing house, Messrs. Phillips, 
Sampson, & Co., died, and the magazine 
passed into the hands of Messrs. Ticknor & 
Fields. Mr. Lowell continued as editor until 
1862, when he was succeeded by Mr. Fields. 

In the first three volumes there are a few 
notable articles from Lowell, including two 
of a political character, entitled "A Pocket 
Celebration of the Fourth," and " A Sample 
of Consistency." Among the poems may be 
mentioned "The Dead House," — one that 
no reader ever forgets, It appears to have 
haunted the memory of some poets also. 

6 



82 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

*' The Origin of Didactic Poetry," in the first 
number, is an amusing fable, in the poet's 
happiest vein. Several fine poems appeared 
in the first volume, among them "The Nest," 
which does not appear in the "complete" 
collection. 

As Lowell was never given to the pro- 
duction of merely fanciful verses, — the very 
lightest of his thistledowns having some seed 
in them, — and as his mind always moved to 
the tides in the ocean of human thought and 
feeling, it will not appear strange that the 
great events following the election of Presi- 
dent Lincoln gave a new direction to his ac- 
tive faculties. In feeling, as before observed, 
he is primarily a poet; but he is also, like 
Milton, a thinker, with a fund of uncommon 
practical sense, and as much of a man of 
action as any retired scholar can be. The 
topsails may fill or flutter in celestial airs 
while the hull struggles in the heaving sea. 

In earlier days there were dreams of the 
peaceful solution of all controversies ; swords 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 83 

were to be beaten into ploughshares; kings 
and nobles were to be submerged in the ris- 
ing tide of humanity. " Round the earth's 
electric circle" went the flash of sympathy. 
The young Victor Hugos of Heidelberg and 
Jena, Paris and Bologna, Berlin and London, 
were in accord. Conservatism was fright- 
ened ; the millennium was coming ; the doc- 
trines of American democracy were to have 
a generousj practical illustration in the gov- 
ernments of enlightened nations. Literature 
was animated by a high philanthropic spirit. 

The poetry of the new school was as pure 
as the Gospels, and as uncompromising as the 
early church. Brook Farm, with its aesthetic 
communism, had been one of the signs of the 
times, — a precursor, it was hoped, of Arca- 
dian days to come. Plainness in dress pre- 
vailed, even among the rich and delicately 
bred. Lowell's youthful portrait, by Page, 
represents him in a coarse brown coat, with 
his broad shirt-collar turned down, and with 
long hair, parted at the centre of the forehead. 



84 • JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

and hanging in careless grace upon rudely 
and wind-tanned cheeks. The poetry of the 
picture is in the calm and dreamy eyes, look- 
ino' out of a shadow of bronze mist. 

But the time of boundless hope for human- 
ity went by, and after the reaction the con- 
servatives were stronger than ever before. 
In this country the passage of the Fugitive 
Slave Bill was the ansAver to the efforts of 
the abolitionists. When the contest between 
North and South was settled, as far as bal- 
lots could do it, by the election of Lincoln, 
the struggle was immediately transferred to 
the field, and for four years the power and 
endurance of the two sections were tried to 
the uttermost. The rebellion surprised most 
people, but wise observers had long seen its 
approaching shadow. A Massachusetts gov- 
ernor procured military overcoats months 
before the rattle of drums was heard. 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 85 

HOSEA BIGLOW AGAIN. 

The " Atlantic " had a number of vigorous 
poHtical articles in prose, and, a few months 
after the outbreak, Lowell again set up the 
simple Biglow stage with the old dramatis 
personcB to ridicule secession. The first at- 
tempt was an epistle in rhyme from the 
veteran Birdofredum Sawin to Hosea. The 
hero of the Mexican war had become a 
Southerner, — had been tarred and feath- 
ered (perhaps by way of acclimatization), — 
had been in the State's Prison on a ground- 
less charge, and on his release had married 
a widow, the owner of slaves. He had 
therefore reached an eminence from which 
he could look down on the ''mudsills" of 
his native State. 

" 'Noiigli said, thet, arter lookin' roun', I liked the place so wal, 
Where niggers doos a double good, with us atop to stiddy 'em, 
By bein' proofs o' prophecy an' suckleatin' medium, 
Where a man 's sunthin' coz he 's white, an' whiskey 's cheap 

ez fleas. 
An' the financial pollercy jes' sooted my ideas, 



86 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

Tbet I friz down right where I wuz, merried the Widder 

Shennon, 
(Her thirds wuz part in cotton-land, part in the curse o' 

Canaan,) 
An' here I be ez lively ez a chipmunk on a wall, 
With notbin' to feel riled about much later 'n Eddam's fall." 

The correspondent desires that Hosea 
should break the news of liis Southern mar- 
riage to the wife he liad left behind. 

" I want thet you should grad'lly break my merriage to Jerushy, 
An' there 's a heap of argymunts thet 's emple to indooce ye : 
Fust place, State's Prison, — wal, it 's true it warn't for 

crime, o' course, 
But then it 's jest the same fer her in gittin' a disvorce ; 
Nex' place, my State's secedin' out hez leg'lly lef me free 
To merry any one I please, pervidin' it 's a she ; 
Fin'lly, I never wun't come back ; she need n't hev no fear 

on 't, 
But then it 's wal to fix things right, fer fear Miss S. should 

hear on 't ; 
Lastly, I 've gut religion South, an' Kushy she 's a pagan 
Thet sets by th' graven imiges o' the gret Nothun Dagon ; 

An' ef J. vpants a stronger pint than them thet I hev stated, 
Wy, she 's an aliun in'my now, an' I 've been cornfiscated." 

The light and mocking tone of this epistle 
is in strong contrast with the deep and 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 87 

almost passionate feeling that breathes in 
the later poems of the series. In the sum- 
mer and autmim of 1861 people thought the 
campaign was to be something like a picnic 
excursion. 

JONATHAN TO JOHN. 

The capture of the rebel commissioners, 
Mason and Slidell, by Commodore Wilkes, 
— a resolute and truly British proceeding, — 
tliough in violation of the law of nations, 
will forever endear his name to the American 
people. None but lawyers will consider the 
persons of those emissaries more sacred than 
spies or munitions of war. Still we must 
approve the cautious policy, or the magna- 
nimity of Lincoln, — whichever it was, — that 
decided upon returning the two white ele- 
phants. The surrender, however, was a 
great trial to pride, particularly in the East- 
ern States, where the memory of England's 
arrogant assumption of sovereignty on the 
seas was still rankling. Lowell has, prob- 



88 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

ably, better than any one, expressed this 
mingled feeling in his famous " Yankee 
Idyll." The preface by the Rev. Mr. Wil- 
bm- shows that gentleman at his best. It 
is worth all the starched formality of the 
State papers on the subject; for it puts the 
case to tlie British ministry in a way that 
leaves its unfriendliness, in recognizing the 
rebels as belligerents and in fitting out priva- 
teers, without even the rags of hypocrisy to 
cover it. In this unaccredited despatch Earl 
Russell might read the sentiments of the 
indignant Northern people. The style of 
the preface is curiously apt. The Latin 
quotations are numerous, as usual, and the 
pungent phrases have an unstudied air, as 
if pugnacity were as natural as breathing. 
But under the equable flow of discourse one 
feels there is a patriotic fire that burns un- 
quenchably. 

International law has gained by the con- 
troversy. The English ministers were right 
and tlie Commodore was wrong ; but Wilkes 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 89 

is a hero forevermore, and Earl Russell and 
his associates are accomplices in a national 
crime. 

In the stern Idyl that follows, the talk 
between Concord Bridge and Bunker Hill 
Monument sounds like the click between 
flint and steel. Concord expresses the natu- 
ral Avrath of tlie nation ; Bunker Hill its 
calm reason and wise policy. The Bridge 
calls up old grievances : — 

" / recollect how sailors' rights was won, 
Yard locked in yard, hot gun-lip kissin' gun. 



Better thet all our ships an' all their crews 
Should sink to rot in ocean's dreamless ooze, 

Than seek sech peace ez only cowards crave : 
Give me the peace of dead men or of brave ! " 

Hosea, we see, grows oratorical, but the 
lieart forgives the swelling tone when such 
a feeling inspires it. 

The Bridge keeps, a little ahead in the dis- 
cussion, as anger generally outruns prudence ; 
and there follows a terrible arraignment of 



90 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

the English before tlie tribunal of the nations. 
Those who lived as mature men and women 
in those times well remember the thrilling- 
apostrophe with which the poem concludes. 
The dialect is unchanged, but it flows with 
resistless energy. The poet has transmuted 
each rustic phrase into a fiery symbol, and 
the images loom up, majestic as the home- 
spun heroes he celebrates. 

" strange New World, tliet yit wast never young, 
Whose youth from thee by gripin' need was wrung, 
Brown foundlin' o' the woods, whose babj^-bed 
Was prowled roun' by the Injun's cracklin' tread. 
An' who grew'st strong thru shifts an' wants an' pains, 
Nussed by stern men with empires in their brains, 



Thou, skilled by Freedom an' by gret events 

To pitch new States ez Old-World men pitch tents, 

Thou, taught by Fate to knov/ Jehovah's plan 

Thet man's devices can't unmake a man, 

An' whose free latch-string never was drawed in 

Against the poorest child of Adam's kin, — 

The grave 's not dug where traitor hands shall lay 

In fearful haste thy murdered corse away ! " 

Then came the impressive ballad, in which 
all the force of the preceding argument was 
fused into a passionate deprecation. 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 91 

" It don't seem hardly right, John, 
When both my hands was full, 
To stump me to a fight, John, — 
Your cousin, tu, John Bull 1 
, Ole Uncle S. sez he, ' I guess 
We know it now,' sez he, 
'The lion's paw is all the law, 
Accordin' to J. B., 
Thet 's fit for you an' me ! ' 

" Shall it be love, or hate, John ? 
It 's you thet 's to decide ; 
Ain't your bonds held by Fate, John, 
Like all the world 's beside ? 
Ole Uncle S. sez he, ' I guess 
Wise men forgive,' sez he, 
' But not forget ; an' some time yet 
Thet truth may strike J. B., 
Ez wal ez you an' me.' " ■ 

"^^- FAME. 

The satires of Hosea Big-low had been 
appreciated by anti-slavery men and by 
judges of poetic art, — a very select com- 
pany in any age, — but the ballad "Jona- 
than to John," appealing to a natural patriotic 
pride, became immediately popular. Party 



92 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

dissensions were stilled during tlie awful 
struggle for national existence, and though 
England was knit to us by ties of kindred 
and by a community of letters and laws, 
there was no one to defend her course in 
any Northern State. The statement of our 
country's case against the " mistress of the 
seas " was received with universal applause. 

The author who had patiently waited for 
recognition could now be satisfied, if fame 
had been his desire. Many literary reputa- 
tions have been built up with as much fore- 
thought and tact as go to the making of 
fortunes. Lowell would not be human if 
he did not relish a good word better than 
an ill one; but he never asked for the one 
or deprecated the other. His fame came as 
slowly as if it had been extorted from an 
unwilling public, — as if it had been weighed 
out to him, ounce by ounce, from an inex- 
orable balance. When unjustly criticised, 
if a friend ]3roposed to take the field, he 
would sa}^, " Don't bother yourself with any 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 93 

sympathy for me under my supposed suffer- 
ings from critics. I don't need it in the 
least. If a man does anything good, the 
world always finds it out, sooner or later ; 
and if he does n't, why the world finds that 
out, too, — and ought." 

There is a similar consolation in a couplet 
from the '' Fable for Critics : " — 

" All the critics on earth cannot crush with their ban 
One word that 's in tune with the nature of man. " 

INSIDE YIEW or SECESSION. 

Mr. Sawin was next heard from in a letter 
to Hosea, detailing his ^' conversion," des- 
canting u]3on the superior strain of South- 
ern blood, and anticipating the creation of 
a batch of nobles as soon as Secession 
should be established. His new wife, he 
says, was a Higgs, the ''first fem'ly" in that 
region, — 

" On her Ma's side all Juggernot, on Pa's all Cavileer." 

After some ridicule of "Normal" blood and 



94 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

Huguenot descent, we have an inside view 
of Secession, — salt selling" by the ounce, 
whiskey getting "skurce," and sugar not to 
be had. Meantime the comer-stone of the 
new State is a powder-cask, and Jeff. Davis 
is " cairn the Constitooshun roun' in his hat." 
The ironical compliments of Mr. Sawin to 
the national Congress conclude the letter. 

A burlesque message of Davis to the Con- 
federate Congress and a speech of a South- 
ern sympathizer in a secret (Northern) caucus 
followed, and then came one of the most 
justly celebrated of the series, entitled, 
'^ Sunthin' in the Pastoral Line." One other, 
soon to be mentioned, rises to a higher ke}^ ; 
but this Pastoral is the perfection of descrip- 
tive poetry. It is wonderful to see how the 
dialect is moulded by the thought. "When 
the sights and soimds and odors of spring 
come to mind, the crabbed speech becomes 
poetical, as a plain face glows into beauty 
on the sudden impulse of the heart. There 
have been many serious and comic descrip- 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 95 

tions of the waywardness and coquetry of 
a New England spring, but this may serve 
as a resume, like a cyclopsedia. Every line 
suggests a picture, neither stately nor jocose, 
but like nature itself 

There are ancient musical ''modes" that 
are neither major nor minor, in which the 
movement from grave to joyous chords is 
made without modulation and without shock. 
So in this unique Pastoral we pause over the 
loveliest images and hints of tantalizing like- 
ness ; and, while the pleasure still lingers, we 
fmd that Hosea has gone on, whitthng away at 
some problem, and using his mother-wit with 
unconscious and aphoristic art. To give in- 
stances would be to quote the poem. Sooner 
quote any one of the thousand clumps of rosy 
mist from Mr. Sargent's acre of azaleas. 

HOSEA BECOMES PASTORAL AND IDYLLIC. 

After a while, Hosea, declaring himself 
"unsoshle as a stone," because his ''innard 
vane" has been "pintin' east" for weeks 



96 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

together, starts off to lose himself in the 
pine woods. He comes to a small deserted 
" sclioorusV a favorite resort when in a 
bluish revery, and, sitting down, he falls 
asleep. Here comes a passage that must be 
quoted : — 

" Our lives in sleep are some like streams thet glide 
'Twixt flesh an' sperrit boundin' on each side, 
Where both shores' shadders kind o' mix and mingle 
In sunthin' thet ain't jes' like either single; 
An' when you cast off moorin's from To-day, 
An' down towards To-morrer drift away. 
The imiges thet tengle on the stream 
Make a new upside-down'ard world o' dream." 

A Pilgrim Father appears. 

" He wore a steeple-hat, tall boots, an' spurs 
With rowels to 'em big ez ches'nut burrs." 

This was Hosea's remote ancestor, once a 
colonel in the parliamentary army. He 
makes himself known, and tells his descend- 
ant that he had 

" worked round at sperrit-rappin' some, 
An' danced the tables till their legs wuz gone, 
In hopes o' larnin' wut wuz goin' on. 
But mejums lie so like all-split 
Thet I concluded it wuz best to quit." 




The Mill-Wheel. 

Sec page 62. 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 97 

In Ins youth, he tells Hosea, he had youth's 
pride of opinion : — 

" Nothin' from Adam's fall to Huldy's bonnet, 
Thet I warn't fuU-cocted with my jedgment on it." 

He makes a parallel between the cause of the 
loyal North and that of the Commonwealth 
against King Charles, and exclaims : — 

" ' Slav'ry 's your Charles, the Lord hez gin the exe — ' 
' Our Charles,' sez I, ' hez gut eight million necks.' " 

He likens the rebellion to the rattle of the 
snake, and adds : — 

" It 's Slavery thet 's the fangs an' thinkin' head, 
An', ef you want selvation, cresh it dead ! " 

PAESON WILBUR. 

In the preface to the next poem the death 
of the Kev. Mr. Wilbur is announced, and, 
shadow though he be, the reader feels his 
loss like that of a friend. 

The thought of grief for the death of an 
imaginary person is not quite so absurd as 
it might appear. One day, while the great 

7 



98 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

novel of "The Newcomes" was in course of 
j)nblication, Lowell, who was then in Lon- 
don, met Thackeray on the street. Tlie 
novelist was serious in manner, and his looks 
and voice told of weariness and affliction. 
He saw the kindly inquiry in the poet's eyes, 
and said, " Come in to Evans's, and I '11 tell 
you all about it. / have /cilled the Colonel^ 
So they walked in and took a table in a 
remote corner, and then Thackeray, draw- 
ing the fresh sheets of manuscript from his 
breast pocket, read through that exquisitely 
touching chapter which records the death of 
Colonel Newcome. Wlien he came to the 
final Adswn, the tears which had been swell- 
ing his lids for some time trickled down 
upon his face, and the last word was almost 
an inarticulate sob. 

Let us go on with Mr. Wilbur. In the 
letter which gives the news of his death, the 
writer declares . that the good clergyman's 
life was shortened by our unhappy civil 
war. 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 99 

The train of thouglit which follows proba- 
bly represents the state of the poet's own 
mind. Mr. Wilbur, in an unfinished letter, 
left behind, says: "It has been my habit, 
as you know, on every recurrence of this 
blessed anniversary (Christmas), to read Mil- 
ton's ' Hymn of the Nativity,' till its sublime 
harmonies so dilated my soul and quickened 
its spiritual sense, that I seemed to hear that 
other song which gave assurance to the shep- 
herds that there was One who would lead 
them also in green pastures and beside the 
still waters. But to-day I have been unable 
to think of anything but that mournful text, 
' I came not to bring peace, but a sword.' " 

The poem sent with the good parson's last 
letter is a vigorous appeal for ending the 
war, — a protest against vacillation and lialf- 
heartedness. The j)relude shows the heart's 
desire : — 

"Ef I a song or two could make 

Like rockets clruv by their own burnin', 
All leap an' light, to leave a wake 

Men's hearts aa' faces skyward turnin' ! " 



100 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

The key-note of the j^oem is in the last coup- 
let of the first stanza : — 

" Wut 's wanted now 's the silent rhyme 

'Twixt upright Will an' downright Action." 

Truly the struggle had been long and 
aefonizinff. 



YANKEE HUMOR AND PATHOS. 

If the test of poetry be in its power over 
hearts, the tenth in this series must be placed 
in the highest rank. The beginning is quaint, 
simple, and even humorous, but with a sub- 
dued tone ; there is no intimation of the 
coming pathos ; nor are we conscious of the 
slow steps by which we are led, stanza by 
stanza, to the heights where thought and 
feeling become one. 

Admirers of the great actor, William War- 
ren, who is called a comedian, but who is 
possessed of the rarest paliietic power, have 
often been indignant when rural auditors, 
imagining that everything uttered by the 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 101 

favorite must be funny, giggle and clap at 
the marvellous accents and action whicli 
move all thinking people to sudden tears. 
It is with some kindred apprehension that 
the present writer ventures to quote a stanza 
in the native dialect ; though full of delicate 
feeling, expressed with the inimitable art of 
a great poet, the unlettered style suggests 
only what is ridiculous " to the general," 
who can see nothing toucliing in the senti- 
ment of a rustic, and are not softened by 
tears unless shed into a broidered handker- 
chief. 

'•' Sence I begun to scribble rhyme, 
I tell ye wut, I hain't ben foolin' ; 
The parson's books, life, death, an' tifne 

Hev took some trouble with my schoolin' ; 
Nor th' airth don't git put out with me, 

Thet love her 's though she louz a woman; 
Why, th' ain't a bird upon the tree 
But half forgives my hein' humane 

The poet goes on recalling — 

" Sights innercent ez babes on knee, 
Peaceful ez eyes o' pastur'd cattle ; " 



102 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

The " yaller pines," 

" When sunshine makes 'em all sweet-scented, 
An' hear among their furry boughs 

The baskin' west-wind purr contented ; " 

Then 

" The farm-smokes, sweetes' sight on airth, 
Slow thru the winter air a-shrinkin' 
Seem kin' o' sad, an' roun' the hearth 
Of empty places set me tbiukin'." 

This brings to mind the poet's slain nephews: 

'' Why, bain't I held 'em on my knee ? 
Did n't I love to see 'em growin', 
Three likeiy lads ez wal could be, 

Hahnsome an' brave an' not tu knowiii' ? " 



" Wut 's words to them whose faith an' truth 

On War's red techstone rang true metal, 
Who ventered life an' love an' youth 

For the gret prize o' death in battle ? 
To him who, deadly hurt, agen 

Flashed on afore the charge's thunder, 
Tippin' with fire the bolt of men 

Thet rived the Eebel line asunder ? " 

In this last stanza the direct, weighty 
words, the intensity of feeling, and the force 
of the bold images create a sensation that 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 103 

is nothing less than subhme. It refers, as 
readers perhaps know, to the poet's nephew, 
General Charles Rnssell Lowell, at the battle 
of Winchester, who, though he had received 
a wound which he knew to be mortal, 
mounted his horse, and led his troops in a 
brilliant charge, was again mortally wounded, 
and shortly after expired. 

Here the sorrowing Hosea exclaims : — 

" 'T ain't right to hev the young go fust, 
All throhbin' full o' gifts an' graces." 

But the lines are palpitant like naked nerves, 
and every word is like the branch plucked 
by Dante, which trickled blood. We must 
leave the poem with its aching burden, and 
forbear to copy even its noble conclusion. 

HOSEA AS AN ORATOR. 

The last of the "Biglow Papers" is a 
speech of Hosea in the March town meeting. 
The preface is by the Meliboeus-Hipponax 
himself, and is a delightful ragout of Yankee 



104 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

phrases, peppered with pungent wit. His 
summary or ^'argymimt" of a popular 
speech has been often copied, and has done 
service in many comic readings ; but its 
irresistible drollery keeps it fresh. 

Those who know the real sources of cur- 
rent proverbial slang, and of much of the 
wit of Yankeeland, need not be told that the 
" Biglow Papers" have furnished enough for 
the stock in trade of a dozen professional 
humorists. 

" THE AKGYMUNT. 

" Interducshin, w'ich may be skipt. Begins by 
talkin' about himself : tliet 's jest natur an' most 
gin'ally alius pleasin', I b'leeve I 've notist, to one 
of the cumpany, an' tbet 's more than wut you can 
say of most speshes of talkin'. Nex' comes the 
gittin' the goodwill of the orjunce by lettin' 'em 
gether from wut you kind of ex'dentally let drop 
thet they air about East, A one, an' no mistaik, 
skare 'em up an' take 'em as they rise. Spring 
interdooced with a fiew approput flours. Speach 
finally begins witch nobuddy need n't feel oboly- 
gated to read as I never read 'em an' never shell 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 105 

this one ag'in. Subjick staited ; expanded; de- 
layted; extended. Pump lively. Subjick staited 
ag'in so 's to avide all mistaiks. Ginnle remarks ; 
continooed; kerried on; pushed f urder ; kind o' 
gin out. Subjick re-staited ; dielooted; stirred up 
permiscoous. Pump ag'in. Gits back to where 
he sot out. Can't seem to stay thair. Ketches 
'into Mr. Seaward's hair. Breaks loose ag'in an' 
staits his subjick; stretches it; turns it; folds it ; 
onfolds it ; folds it ag'in so 's 't no one can't find it. 
Argoos with an imedginary bean thet ain't aloud 
to say nothin' in repleye. Gives him a real good 
dressin' an' is settysfide he 's rite. Gits into John- 
son's hair. No use tryin' to git into his head. 
Gives it up. Hez to stait his subjick ag'in ; doos 
it back'ards, sideways, eendways, criss-cross, bevel- 
lin', noways. Gits finally red on it. Concloods. 
Concloods more. Reads some xtrax. Sees his sub- 
jick a-nosin' round arter him ag'in. Tries to avide 
it. Wun't du. iUfz'sstates it. Can't conjectur' no 
other plawsable way of staytin' on it. Tries pump. 
No fx. Finely concloods to conclood. Yeels the 
flore." 

In the course of the speech that follows, 
Mr. Biglow observes : — 



106 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

" N. B. Keporters gin'Uy git a hint 
To make dull orjunces seem 'live in print, 
An', ez I Lev t' report myself, I vum, 
I'll put th' applaiises where they 'd ough' to come!" 

Little did the orator of Jaalam suppose 
that his shrewd plan would be copied years 
afterwards by a great lecturer. 

EECONSTRUCTION. 

The speech is supjDosed to have been made 
in April, 1866, a year after the surrender of 
Lee; and the *'subjick" is naturally upon 
what has since been called ''reconstruction." 
In the light of the history of the last dozen 
years, the sound sense and almost prophetic 
character of this speech are remarkable. It 
is free from bitterness, but it states with un- 
flinching rigor the only conditions of national 
unity. Of these the chief is 

" the old Amerikin idee, 
•To make a man a Man an' let him be." 

The President, Andrew Johnson, comes in 
for the hardest hits. 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 107 

" ' Nobody ain't a Union man,' sez he, 
'Thout he agrees, thru thick an' thin, with me ;" 



" Is this ere pop'lar gov'ment thet we run 
A kin' o' sulky, made to kerry one ? " 

"Who cares for the Eesolves of '61, 
Thet tried to coax an airthquake with a bun ? " 

" He thinks secession never took 'em out, 
An' mebby he 's correc', but I misdoubt ; 
Ef they war n't out, then why, 'n the name o' sin, 
Make all this row 'bout lettin' of 'em in ? " 

[Derisive cheers.] 

" 0, did it seem 'z ef Providunce 
Could ever send a second Tyler ? 
To see the South all back to once, 
Eeapin' the spiles o' the Freesiler, 
Is cute ez though an ingineer 
Should claim th' old iron for his sheer 
Coz 't was himself that bust the biler ! " 

[Gret laughter.] 

THE DECAY OF THE YANKEE DIALECT. 

From this comparatively long, but really 
brief and inadequate, synopsis the reader 
may infer the high aim and definite moral 



108 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

purpose of the " Biglow Papers," and their 
intimate connection with otir national his- 
tory. Poetry seklom needs comment ; tlie 
lightning flash explains itself ; and, in truth, 
comment rarely carries admiration along witli 
it into the mind of the reader. Bat the " Big- 
low Papers " are in a foreign tongue for all 
city folk ; and even in the country the patois 
has for a long time been faithfully grubbed 
up by school-ma'ams, like the Canada thistle. 
An appreciation of Burns comes after as much 
study as the Provencal songs require, and it 
is only one " native and to the manner born " 
who is able to perceive and to convey by 
vocal inflections the right eff'ect of the eli- 
sions and contractions that make such thorny 
thickets of Yankee verse. On the other hand, 
few of tliose who have inherited knowledge 
of the dialect have the cultivation and the 
innate feeling for the essence of poetry, 
which many of Lowell's productions ask of 
the reader. Between the difficulties of the 
dialect, and the higli demands of all true 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 109 

poetry upon the intelligence, tlie highest 
qualities of the " Biglow Papers " are far 
enough removed from popular apj)rehension. 
But whoever will give them such a study as 
will insure mastery, will be rewarded by the 
knowledge of some of the most vigorous, 
impassioned, humorous, dainty, quaint, and 
glowing verse of our century. 

As, at the beginning, Lowell was men- 
tioned as one of the forces and products of 
the age, — an actor and sympathizer in its 
moral and political movements, — it has been 
deemed essential to dwell more upon the 
works which have become a part of our his- 
tory. The usual topics of poetry — nature 
and man — have been illustrated in many 
graceful and noble poems by many loved 
and honored poets : by Lowell also ; but in 
the ordinary acceptation of the meaning and 
use of poetry he is but one of several emi- 
nent masters, each having his own great 
merits ; while in this new field ]ie is wholly 
without a rival, — the sole laureate of the 



110 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

native, unlettered speech, and the exemplar 
of the mother-wit of New England. The 
few characters in his di-amas are comjile- 
mentary, or perhaps, as he himself sug- 
gests, "humorously identical under a seem- 
ing incongruity." The Rev. Mr. Wilbur 
expresses '' the more cautious element of the 
New England character and its pedantry," 
as Hosea Biglow does "its homely common- 
sense vivified and heated by conscience. . . . 
Finding that I needed some one as a mouth- 
piece of the mere drollery, ... I invented 
Mr. Sawin for the clown of my little puppet 
show." 

The introduction to the series is a learned 
and masterly account of the dialect, — as a 
legitimate derivative of the spoken English 
of the Elizabethan age, — and a protest 
against the prevalent "fine writing," as tend- 
ing to weaken prose and stifle poetry. He 
defends certain extravagances in speech (la- 
mented by purists) as being evidences of 
"intensity and picturesqueness, symptoms of 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. m 

the imaginative faculty in full health and 
strength." He says, "The first postulate of 
an original literature is that a people should 
use their language instinctively and uncon- 
sciously. . . . Even Burns contrived to write 
very poor verse and prose in English. Vul- 
garisms are often only poetry in the egg^ 

The whole essay is pervaded by the in- 
tense individuality of genius. After enduring 
the petulance and assumption of philologists, 
and the canal-water flow of conservators of 
the purity of English, this fresh and original 
discussion is as charming and exhilarating as 
a day in the woods in spring. 

CHAUCEE-BOCCACCIO. 

"Fitz Adam's Story" was printed in the 
"Atlantic" for January, 1867, but has not 
yet been included in any " complete " edi- 
tion. A note informs us that it was intended 
as a part of a longer poem to be called " The 
Nooning." It stands like the Aving of a pro- 
jected edifice, waiting for the main structure 
to give it countenance. 



112 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

This poem has many traits in common 
with the best of the " Biglow Papers." Like 
them, it is exuberant in feeUng- and secular 
in tone ; and its movement is breez}^, out-of- 
doors, and natural, — as different from the 
precise, conscious, and scholastic manner as 
the glowing energy of a sermon by Beecher is 
from the marmorean elegance of Everett. The 
poem is not wholly in a comic vein. The 
portrait of Fitz Adam himself is a master- 
piece, an instantaneous view of a complexity 
of character and motive, — genius and whim 
kneaded together and made real flesh and 
blood. In ftxct, the author uses the whole 
gamut, and has the ready chords for senti- 
ment and poetical description as well as for 
the swift ]}arlando of wit and the unrestrained 
chorus of fun. 

Fitz Adam tells us, — 

" Without a Past you lack that southern wall 
O'er which the vines of Poesj^ should crawl." 

He pays his homage to our great ro- 
mancer : — 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 113 

" You have one story-teller worth a score 
Of dead Boccaccios, — nay, add twenty more, 
A hawthorn asking spring's most southern breath, 
And him you're freezing pretty well to death." 

He takes us to Shebagog County, where 
the summer idlers 

" Dress to see Nature in a well-bred way. 
As 't were Italian opera, or play. 
Encore the sunrise, (if they 're out of bed,) 
And pat the Mighty Mother on the head," 

Fond of the frontiers-men and their natu- 
ral ways, he puts them in a line : — 

" The shy, wood-wandering brood of character." 

He paints the landlord of the rustic inn. 
The picture seems as deep-lined and lasting 
as one of Chaucer's. We see the tanned 
cheeks and the ^'brambly breast," and how 

" a hedge of gray 
Upon his brawny throat leaned every way 
About an Adam's apple that beneath 
Bulged like a bowlder from a furzy heath." 

The landlord gives an axiom for the kitchen, 
for which the epicure will hold him in affec- 
tionate remembrance : — 



114 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

" Nothin' riles me (I pledge my fastin' word), 
Like cookin' out the iiatiir' of a bird." 

Fitz Adam describes the solemn parlor in 
a way to raise a sympathetic chill in the 
reader : 

" Where the black sofa with its horse-hair pall 
Gloomed like the bier for Comfort's funeral." 

The bar is painted as if by Teniers, with its 
great wood-fire, and the coals in which was 
heating 

" the loggerhead whose hissing dip, 
Timed by nice instinct, creamed the mug of flip." 

Then follows the encounter of teamsters' wits, 
and the sketch of Deacon Bitters, a mean and 
avaricious wretch whose tricks brought him 
to a sulj)hureous end. The audacity of the 
story is forgotten in its absurdly comic keep- 
ing. It is a modern Canterbury Tale. 

THE PEOFESSOE SUPPLANTS THE POET. 

Though Harvard College and its succes- 
sive classes of students and the learned 
world have been indebted to the critical 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 115 

labors of Lowell, yet mankind at large have 
been more interested in tlie original creations 
of his genius. The effect of his engrossing 
and protracted studies has been to make 
more prominent the philosophic tone in his 
verse. To him who is day by day wrestling 
with the stern problems of Dante, or con- 
templating the creations of Shakespeare, 
there may come a high and noble mastery 
of philosophy and art. But the period in 
which the poet delights in outdoor life — 
when his soul feels God in nature, and floats 
in the ocean of analogies between the real 
and the ideal world — is the period in which 
his best poems are born. The work of the 
great critic may imply the rarer power ; 
but mankind cherishes more the pictures 
of Beaver Brook and Appledore, the song of 
bobolinks, the joy of spring, and the loves 
of Huldys and Zekles. Lowell's mind un- 
derwent a change also in the loss of his 
heroic nephews and other near relatives in 
the war. This is painfully evident in the 



116 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

poem before quoted. There were to be 
fewer birds and blossoms tliencefoi-tli. The 
awful lessons of Divine Providence were 
such as to sadden the most joyous or the 
most religious of men. Under such afflic- 
tions, particularly after life has passed its 
meridian, it is impossible to feel anew the 
ecstatic thrills in the presence of nature ; 
the mind grows introspective, ponders the 
deep questions of Job and his friends, and 
forgets the external world. 

UNDER THE WILLOWS. 

It will be seen that the period in which 
Lowell's most popular works appeared ended 
with the late war. They cannot be classified, 
however, in a chronological order, because 
he sometimes allowed a considerable period 
to pass before giving a poem to the public. 
The collection entitled '^ Under the Willows," 
published in 1869, contains ''A Winter-Even- 
ing Hymn to my Fire," printed originally 
in "Putnam's Monthly" fifteen years before. 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. UJ 

" Fitz Adam's Story," wliich has just been 
considered, belongs to a similar period, as do 
the gay and characteristic acknowledgment of 
Mr. John Bartlett's trout, and the well-known 
pathetic ballad, '' The First Snow-Fall." In 
the variety of subjects, the perfect keeping 
of the style of each, the power of suggesting 
a landscape or an image by a single phrase, 
and in the mature and perfect art, this volume 
has a rightful place among the chief intel- 
lectual works of the century. 

It is difficult to convey an adequate im- 
pression of these poems, because it is seldom 
that the striking paragraphs are separable. 
The address " To the Muse " is the most 
subtile and delicate in treatment ; and ''Villa 
Franca" and "The Washers of the Shroud" 
are the strongest in thought. Two stanzas 
are quoted from ''Villa Franca" which show 
a singular prophetic power. The poem was 
written in 1859, at the time of the meeting 
of the three emperors, when Napoleon III. 
appeared to be as firmly established as his 
great and long-descended compeers. 



118 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 



VILLA FRANCA. 

"We shall see him come and gone, 
This second-hand Napoleon. 

" We saw the elder Corsican, 
And Clotho muttered as she span, 
While crowned lackeys bore the train, 
Of the pinchbeck Charlemagne : 
* Sister, stint not length of thread 1 
Sister, stay the scissors dread ! 
On Saint Helen's granite bleak, 
Hark, the vulture whets his beak I ' 

Spin, spin, Clotho, spin! 

Lachesis, twist ! and, Atropos, sever ! 

In the shadow, year out, year in, 

The silent headsman waits forever, 

*' The Bonapartes, we know their bees 
That wade in honey red to the knees ; 
Their patent reaper, its sheaves sleep sound 
In dreamless garners underground : 
We know false glory's spendthrift race 
Pawning nations for feathers and lace ; 
It may be short, it may be long, 
' 'T is reckoning-day ! ' sneers unpaid Wrong. 

Spin, spin, Clotho, spin ! 

Lachesis, twist ! and, Atropos, sever ! 

In the shadow, year out, year in, 

The silent headsman waits forever." 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 119 

One small poem is printed entire, as a rare 
specimen of aphoristic art. 

FOR AN AUTOGRAPH. 

Though, old the thought and oft exprest, 
'T is his at last who says it best, — 
I '11 try my fortune with the rest. 

Life is a leaf of paper white 
Whereon each one of us may write 
His word or two, and then comes night. 

" Lo, time and space enough," we cry, 
" To write an epic ! " so we try 
Our nibs upon the edge, and die. 

Muse not which way the pen to hold, 
Luck hates the slow and loves the bold, 
Soon come the darkness and the cold. 

Greatly begin ! though thou have time 
But for a line, be that sublime, — 
Not failure, but low aim, is crime. 

Ah, with what lofty hope we came ! 
But we forget it, dream of fame, 
And scrawl, as I do here, a name. 



120 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

As a critic, Lowell has been more unspar- 
ing upon his own productions than upon the 
works of others. Genius and Taste are twin- 
born ; the one creates, the other tests. Many 
a day Genius produces nothing that Taste will 
allow. Taste corrects or blots out, so as to 
leave nothing that Time will destroy. Happy 
is the Genius with whom Taste continues to 
dwell as a friend and helper. Too often he 
goes over to the enemy, and sits in judgment 
with the reviewers. 

Some of his later poems have, as in Emer- 
son's *' Test," been hung in the wind and 
smelted in a pot, 

" Till the meaning was more white 
Than July's meridian light. 
Sunshine cannot bleach the snow, 
Nor Time unmake what poets know." 

METAPHYSICAL SUBTILTY IN POETRY. 

The original traits of Lowell's genius are 
unmistakable ; and, in spite of tlie gravity of 
his later poems, the reader often comes upon 
the turns of thought which marked his verse 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 121 

twenty years before. Bnt along with the 
contmued likeness there has been a slowly 
growing divergence. In the development of 
a scholar and poet we expect to see the evi- 
dences of maturing powers, varied experience, 
and mastery of expression; that is to say, 
force, wisdom, and skill are the natural gains 
of- twenty years. This is true in the case 
of Lowell; but what is more remarkable is 
the steady lifting of his intellectual horizon, 
and the spiritualizing of thought, so that, 
as in the celestial mechanics, words become 
the symbols of ideas that reach towards the 
infinite. This is considered to be in the 
domain of Emerson, but Lowell is some- 
times more transcendental even than the 
great poet-philosopher himself. 

In "The Foot-Path" the reader begins 
with a view that is within his not infrequent 
experience : — 

« It mounts athwart the windy Mil 

Through sallow slopes of upland bare, 
And Fancy climbs with foot-fall still 
Its narrowing curves that end in air.' 



122 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

But the poet's aerial way only begins where 
mortal vision ends. As stanza succeeds 
musical stanza, the mind follows clews and 
glim^Dses, conscious of sensations for which 
there are no words, and of an upward motion 
into a realm where ideas are as fluent as air, 
and as imjoalpable. Read this exquisite but 
tantalizing poem to any chance-gathering of 
well-bred people, and observe their puzzled 
expression ! To some it will appear a musi- 
cal stream, without ripple and without mean- 
ing. Few will climb the poet's stairway to 
the heaven of thought ! 

Humboldt said that the vegetation upon 
the sides of Chimborazo exhibits at succes- 
sive elevations all the characteristic flora from 
the equator to the arctic circle : the bound- 
less luxuriance of the tropics at the base, 
and the eternal ice of the pole at the sum- 
mit. Poetry likewise comprehends, many 
zones. Its lower level is in scenes of lavish 
beauty, and it concerns itself in the joy of 
the senses in external nature. Higher up 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 123 

there are fewer flowers and hardier growths, 
but ''purer air and broader view." Still 
higher are the brown and lichened steeps 
that tax strength and demand self-denial. 
Above, and reaching into the infinite sky, is 
the silent peak, inaccessible, eternal. 

COMMEMORATION ODE. 

The Commemoration Ode (July 21, 1865) 
naturally succeeds the poignant grief of the 
later " Biglow Papers." The dedication is 
one that only a poet could have written : " To 
the ever sweet and shining memory of the 
ninety-three sons of Harvard College who 
have died for their country in the war of 
nationality." In the privately printed edi- 
tion of the poem the names of eight of the 
poet's kindred are given. The nearest in 
blood are his nephews, General Charles 
Russell Lowell, killed at Winchester, Lieu- 
tenant James Jackson Lowell, at Seven 
Pines, and Captain William Lowell Putnam, 



124 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

at Ball's Bluff. Another relative was the he- 
roic Colonel Robert G. Shaw, who fell in the 
assault upon Fort A¥agner. The Commemo- 
ration services took place in the open air, in 
the presence of a great assembly. Promi- 
nent among the speakers were Major-General 
Meade, the hero of Gettysburg, and Major- 
General Devens. The wounds of the war 
were still fresh and bleeding, and the interest 
of the occasion was deep and thrilling. The 
summer afternoon was drawing to its close 
when the poet began the recital of the ode. 
No living audience could for the first time 
follow with intelligent appreciation the de- 
livery of such a poem. To be sure, it had 
its obvious strong points and its sonorous 
charms ; but, like all the later poems of the 
author, it is full of condensed thought and 
requires study. The reader to-day finds 
many passages whose force and beauty es- 
caped him during the recital, yet the effect 
of the poem at the time was overpowering. 
The face of the poet, always singularly ex- 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 125 

pressive, was on tliis occasion almost trans- 
figured, — glowing, as if with an inward 
liglit. It was impossible to look awaj^ from 
it. Our age lias furnished many great his- 
toric scenes, but this Commemoration com- 
bined the elements of grandeur and pathos, 
and produced an impression as lasting as life. 
Of the merits of the ode it is perhaps too 
soon to speak. In nobility of sentiment and 
sustained power it appears to take rank 
among the first in the language. To us, 
with the memories of the war in mind, it 
seems more beautiful and of a finer quality 
than the best of Dryden's. What the people 
of the coming centuries will say, who knows ? 
We only know that the auditors, scholars and 
soldiers alike, were dissolved in admiration 
and tears. 

TWO FEIEI^DS. 

As the people were dispersing, a fresh- 
looking, active, and graceful man of middle 
age, in faultless attu'e, met the poet with an 



126 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

outstretched hand. There was a hearty 
greeting on botli sides, — so hearty, that one 
wonders how it could have happened be- 
tween two Bostonians, whose marble man- 
ners the public knows so well from our 
recent fashionable novels. It was not the 
formal touch of gloved hands, but an old- 
fiishioned energetic " shake ; " and it was 
accompanied by spontaneous, half-articulated 
words (such as the heart translates without 
a lexicon), while eager and misty eyes met 
each other. The new-comer was William 
W. Story, the sculptor and poet. — ^''Wlien 
did you come over?" — ''I landed at Bos- 
ton tliis morning. I had heard you were to 
read a poem; there was just time to make 
the trip, and here I am." — ''And so you 
have come from Rome merely to hear me 
recite an ode*? Well, it is just like you." 

THE CATHEDEAL. — CONSERVATISM. 

''The Cathedral" is a profound medita- 
tion upon a great theme. A poet is not 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 127 

held to the literal meaning of the motto 
he selects, but the lines prefixed to this 
poem^ are strongly significant of a grow- 
ing conservatism in thought. '^ Not at all 
do we set our wits against the gods. 
The traditions of the fathers, and those of 
equal date which we possess, no reasoning 
shall overthrow; not even if through lofty 
minds it discovers wisdom." This is perhaps 
a fair indication of the feeling of the poem. 
The incidents of the day at Chartres are 
unimportant, except in connection with the 
poet's admiration for Gothic architecture, and 
his musings upon the associations of the 
cathedral, the old worship, the old reverence, 
and the old ways. 

It would seem that the intellectual move- 
ment in which the poet had been borne on 
for so many years was latterly becoming too 
rapid and tumultuous, according to his think- 
ing, — ready to plunge into an abyss, in fact. 
In particular, it may be observed that, though 

1 Euripides, Bacchse, 196-199. 



128 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

the physical aspect of evolution had engaged 
liis attention, as it has that of all intellectual 
men, and had commanded, perhaps, a startled 
and dubious assent, yet his strong spiritual 
nature recoiled in horror from the material- 
istic application of the doctrine to the origin 
of things. Force could never be to him the 
equivalent of spirit, nor law the substitute for 
God. In conversation once upon the " prom- 
ise-and-potency " phrases of Tyndall, he ex- 
claimed with energy, ^' Let whoever wishes 
to, believe that the idea of Hamlet or Lear 
was developed from a clod ; I will not." 

A couplet from " The Foot-Path " makes 'a 
similar 2:)rotest against the theory of the uni- 
verse which leaves out a Creator : — 

" And envy Science not her feat 

To make a twice-told tale of God." 

Intimations of the Berkeleyan theory ap- 
pear in '' The Cathedral," not as matters of 
behef, but of speculation. But the granitic 
basis of the poem is the generally received 
doctrine of the being of Grod, — of His works 






o 
> 




A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 129 

and His dealings witli men. The clear pur- 
pose is seen by tlie attentive reader, although 
at times through a haze of poetic diction. Its 
strong points are in the simplicity and sug- 
gestiveness of its illustrations, its firm hold 
upon the past, and its tranquil rejDOse in the 
care of Divine Providence. The style is for 
the most part scholastic, nervous, and keen- 
edged. There are some lovely rural pictures 
near the beginning, so characteristic that if 
they were done in color we should not need 
to look at the corner for the '' J. R. L. pinx*." 
The episode of the two Englishmen at 
Chartres, who, on account of the poet's full 
and ruddy beard, mistook him for a French- 
man, and endeavored to engage him as a 
guide, is a piece of drollery that one would 
prefer to see in a sketch by Artemus Ward 
or Mark Twain. 

" My beard translated me to hostile French ; 
So they, desiring guidance in the town, 
Half condescended to my baser sphere, 
And, clubbing in one mess their lack of phrase, 
Set their best man to grapple with the Gaul. 
9 



130 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

' Esker vous ate a nabitang ? ' he asked ; 

' I never ate one ; are they good 1 ' asked I ; 

Whereat they stared, then laughed, and we were friends." 

The wit is perhaps bright, but the passage 
is painfully incongruous. It is true the 
old cathedrals have carvings of grotesque 
comedy, but they are in stone, and are not 
obtrusive. This appears to be the single 
thought out of place in the high serenity of 
a philosophic poem. 

Two instances of the harmony of sound 
and sense are quite remarkable. One is 
the description of the falling of an ash-leaf, — 

" Balancing softly earth^vard without wind," — 

an inimitably perfect line. The other sug- 
gests the swinging of a bell-blossom : — 

" As to a bee the new campanula's 
Illuminate seclusion swung in air." 

A few lines and passages may be quoted 
with advantage : — 

" I found mine eyes 
Confronted with the minster's vast repose. 
Silent and gray as forest-leaguered cliff 
Left inland by the ocean's slow retreat. 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 131 

(0/ Gothic Architecture.') 

But ah. ! this other, this that never ends, 
Still climbing, luring fancy still to climb, 
As full of morals half-divined as life, 
Graceful, grotesque, with ever new surprise 
Of hazardous caprices sure to please, 
Heavy as nightmare, airy-light as fern, 
Imagination's very self in stone ! 

Far up the great bells wallowed in delight, 
Tossing their clangors o'er the heedless town- 
Use can make sweet the peach's shady side. 
That only by reflection tastes of sun. 



... on the sliding Eure, 
Whose listless leisure suits the quiet place, 
Lisping among his shallows homelike sounds 
At Concord and by Bankside heard before. 

Blessed the natures shored on every side 
With landmarks of hereditary thought ! 

Now Calvin and Servetus at one board 
Snuff in grave sympathy a milder roast. 
And o'er their claret settle Comte unread. 
Fagot and stake were desperately sincere : 
Our cooler martyrdoms are done in types. 



132 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

Tliou beautiful Old Time, now hid away 

In the Past's valley of Avilion, 

Haply, like Arthur, till thy wound be healed, 

Then to reclaim the sword and crown again ! 

Thrice beautiful to us ; perchance less fair 

To who possessed thee, as a mountain seems 

To dwellers round its bases but a heap 

Of barren obstacle that lairs the storm 

And the avalanche's silent bolt holds back 

Leashed with a hair, — meanwhile some far-oflF clown, 

Hereditary delver of the plain, 

Sees it an unmoved vision of repose. 

Nest of the morning, and conjectures there 

The dance of streams to idle shepherds' pipes, 

And fairer habitations softly hung 

On breezy slopes, or hid in valleys cool. 

For happier men." 

True to its name, '^ The Cathedral " is a 
grand poem, at once solid and imaginative, 
nobly ornate, but with a certain austerity of 
design, uplifting and impressive. These edi- 
fices are perhaps the most wonderful produc- 
tions of mind ; but they are gloomy also, and 
in some moods strike a chill to the very 
marrow. 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 133 

CONCORD, CAMBRIDGE, VIRGINIA. 

Three odes have since appeared, written 
for important occasions, all characterized by 
a lofty tone of sentiment and stately poetic 
diction. The first is one read at Concord, 
April 19, 1875; the next is that read at 
Cambridge, under the Washington Elm, July 
3d in the same year; the third, an ode for 
the Fourth of July, 1876. The Concord ode 
contains the most exquisite music, and shows 
the most evident inspiration. The Cam- 
bridge ode is remarkable for its noble tribute 
to Washington and to the historic Common- 
wealth of Virginia. The last is beautiful 
also, and strong, but scarcely so clear and 
fortunate as -the others. But these, with the 
Commemoration Ode, are an Alpine group, 
an undying part of our national literature. 

CLASSICISM. 

The poetry called classic in our time has 
little vitality. The poems of Matthew Ar- 
nold, for instance, cold and correct as mort- 



134 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

iiary tributes, differ from pensive prose only 
in respect to metrical form. In this sense 
Lowell's poems are not classic : tliey are in- 
stinct with life. They show marks of care ; 
but the care has been bestowed less upon 
melody than upon condensation and energy. 
The earlier poems were more melodious. In- 
stances enough could be given, but two stan- 
zas from ''The Dandelion" must serve : — 

" Then think I of deep shadows on the grass, — 
Of meadows where in sun the cattle graze, 

Where, as the breezes pass. 
The gleaming rushes lean a thousand waji-s, — 

Of leaves that slumber in a cloudy mass, 
Or whiten in the wind, — of waters blue 
That from the distance sparkle through 
Some woodland gap, — and of a sky above, 
Where one white cloud like a stray lamb doth move. 

" My childhood's earliest thoughts are linked with thee ; 
The sight of thee calls back the robin's song, 

Who, from the dark old tree 
Beside the door, sang clearly all day long. 

And T, secure in childish piety, 
Listened as if I heard an angel sing 

With news from heaven, which he could bring 
Fresh every day to my untainted ears 
When birds and flowers and I were happy peers." 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 135 

This devotion to the force and beauty of 
ideas is everywhere to be seen. The poet 
will not give up a harsh word, nor eHde an 
unmusical huddle of consonants, if any 
strength would be lost thereby. A stanza 
from '' Beaver Brook" will illustrate this : — 

" Swift slips Undine along the race 
Unheard, and then, with flashing bound, 
Floods the dull wheel with light and grace. 
And, laughing, hunts the loath drudge round." 

Sibilants and gutturals may delay the fas- 
tidious reader, but when the lines are fin- 
ished he will think only of the immortal 
beauty of the image. 

Pure poetry, like the subtile essences of 
the chemist, is rarely seen but in combina- 
tion. In itself it is thought sublimed, 
remote from demonstration, persuasion, or 
narration. The influences of the strong and 
serviceable qualities of mind are apt to be 
felt at times in the verse even of great poets, 
— like stains of iron in marble ; so that the 
wholly fortunate or perfect specimens are 



136 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

few. The common error is in lapsing into 
philosophic discourse, or indulging in reflec- 
tive or hortatory asides. Something of this 
tendency appears in parts of Lowell's odes, 
dimming their lustre, and even tending to 
obscurity. There is nothing in them obscure 
to a well-trained mind; but unfortunately 
not all minds are so trained as to dissolve 
his thought from out the richly incrusted 
diction. So it remains that the stronger 
poems of Lowell are beyond the comprehen- 
sion of all but cultivated readers. 

A wonderful sifter is Time. ''Complete" 
works will shrink. Stanzas or even whole 
poems may drop out, but the best will be 
preserved. And it is difficult to believe that 
an intelligent reader, whether in the year 
2000 or 3000, will come upon certain poems 
of Lowell without a thrill of sympathy and 
delight. 



\ 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 137 

THE PROSE OF POETS. 

The prose writings of poets are rarely 
conspicuous for masculine qualities. The 
Laureate has been heard only in numbers, as 
if, like an operatic performer, he were theo- 
retically incapable of any but musical speech. 
If his predecessor had similarly refrained 
from prosaic utterances, he would have been 
the gainer, — and the world too. Byron 
wrote natural and effective prose, but with-- 
out either trained ratiocination, scholarly al- 
lusion, or finish. Cowper's letters are models 
of ease and grace. Southey's prose is mag- 
nificent; his poetry? — Really one questions 
whether he was a poet at all. ''Thalaba" 
seems as unreal as a Wagnerian legend or 
an Ossianic wraith. Milton alone holds a 
fixed place among the greatest of poets and 
the ablest of prose writers. 

The prose works of Lowell consist of the 
"Fireside Travels," already referred to, and 
three volumes of essays, published in 1870, 



138 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

1871, and 1876. Of these, the one entitled 
"My Study Windows" will be found most 
interesting to general readers. The other 
two are entitled " Among My Books," and 
are of a purely literary character. A large 
number of his essays have appeared in maga- 
zines and reviews, and have not been as yet 
reprinted. 

It is a common but baseless supposition 
that the poetic faculty must exist singly ; as 
if the cranium, like a flower-pot, could hold 
but one plant. It is true that great poets are 
rarely men of affairs ; but every genius is an 
absolutely new combination of traits and 
powers, and no one knows the possibilities. 
Four arts owned Michelangelo master, and 
he was almost equally great in all. We have 
seen that in the mind of Lowell there is an 
unfailing spring of analogy and suggestion, 
and a power of illustrating subtile and pro- 
found thoughts. And side by side with this 
undeniable poetic powder is to be seen the 
solid understanding, the ready wit, and the 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 139 

practical sagacity that are more commonly 
the birthright of nnpoetic men. It is as if 
the souls of Shelley and Ben Franklin had 
blended. The poet leads, but the man of 
ethereal imagination and the man of sturdy 
force are one. 

The prose of a true poet, if one reflects 
upon it, must have some marked peculiar- 
ities. That which is of the essence of poetry 
is not in its musical cadence, not in its shin- 
ing adjectives and epithets: it is in substance 
as well as in form different from the ordinary 
productions of mind. And as the power of 
appreciation is really rare, though often as- 
sumed, the distinctive prose of a poet is 
necessarily quite removed from general ap- 
prehension. The difficulty lies in following 
the movement of the poetic mind, which is 
by nature erratic, if measured by pro^e stand- 
ards, — taking many things for granted which 
the slower-footed expect to see put down in 
order, — and often supplying the omission of 
a premiss in a logical statement, or the want 



140 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

of a formal description, by a single flashing 
word. Those people who need to have poe- 
try expounded to them, will require similar 
help to understand the prose of poets. '' Villa 
Franca," '^The Foot-Path," ''The Washers 
of the Shroud," and " The Cathedral " will 
never be easy of comprehension ; such j^oems 
make drafts upon the knowledge and the 
insight of even superior minds. Certain 
of Lowell's essays — especially those upon 
Shakespeare, Dante, and Milton — will be 
fully appreciated by only a limited num- 
ber of readers in any generation. 

LOWELL'S PROSE. • 

It is not wonderful that this rich and im- 
aginative prose, permeated as it is with the 
essence of poetry, should have called forth 
unfavorable comment and objurgation. Pro- 
fessor Wilkinson, some years ago, wrote a 
series of labored articles in a popular mag- 
azine, which it was expected were to demol- 
ish our poet's reputation as an essayist. 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 141 

Perhaps some characteristic sentences will 
better illustrate our meaning as to the diver- 
gence between the poetic and the prosaic 
mind. 

Of Wordsworth, Lowell says : — 

" His longer poems are Egytian sand wastes, with 
here and there an oasis of exquisite greenery, a 
grand image, Sphynx-like, half buried in drifting 
commonplaces, or the Pompey's Pillar of some 
towering thought." 

How absurd this is ! What has Words- 
worth to do with Egypt and the Sphynx and 
Pompey's Pillar? — though, to be sure, one 
sees what he would say. If it had been the 
critical professor who had to give the opinion, 
it might have been phrased like this: '' His 
longer poems are flat and dreary, with here 
and there a spot of human interest, — some 
originally fine image, half covered with mean- 
ingless words, or some striking thought that 
holds the attention." 

This is plain sailing : no nonsense about it. 
The idea is the same, and everybody can 



142 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

understand it. In a similar perspicuous man- 
ner the ''practical" critic might tell us of 
Milton's style : " Milton has a grand manner. 
The sentences move slowly and with stateli- 
ness. He borrowed phrases from poets and 
writers of all times; and these epithets are 
continually coming in the way, obscuring 
the clear thought." 

This is the way Lowell has it : — 

" Milton's manner is very grand. It is slow, it 
is stately, moving as in triumphal procession, with 
music, with historic banners, with spoils from every 
time and every region ; — and captive epithets like 
huge Sicambrians,^ thrust their broad shoulders 
between us and the pomp they decorate." 

Of course this is all wrong. Burke, also, 
ought to undergo revision. If a practical 
person were to undertake it, it is probable 
that the twelve volumes of Burke could be 
compressed into three or four, simply lea^dng 

1 " Te caBde gaudentis Sicambri 
Compositis venerantur armis." 

Hor. Lib. IV. Carm. XIV. 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 143 

out useless images, and tlie like. The staple 
of " Modem Painters " could be printed in 
one duodecimo. Following the same plan, 
each of Hawthorne's romances could be got 
into the limits of a magazine story ; and, by 
eliminating the fine writing and metaphysics, 
they would be as easily understood as Peter 
Parley or the Polio Books. 

The prose essays of Lowell^ cover a wide 
range of thought and observation, but all 
have the inevitable family likeness. Men- 
tion has been made of the delightful " Fire- 
side Travels." Of a similar tone are " My 
Garden Acquaintance," "A Good Word for 
Winter," and " On a Certain Condescen- 
sion in Foreigners." The last is a speci- 
men of pure irony, keen as a Damascus 
blade, and finished to the utmost. It is 
doubtful if there is another essay in modern 
English superior in power, wit, and adroit- 
ness. The essay upon Lessing is a charming 

1 " Among My Books," 2 vols, ; " My Study Windows," 
1 vol. 



144 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

piece of writing, full of bright passages, but 
interesting mainly to scholars. " New Eng- 
land Two Centuries Ago " is an historical 
article, in which the Puritans and Pilgrims 
are boldly sketched, — neither unduly flat- 
tered nor summarily condemned, 

GOLD IN QUARTZ. 

A few additional specimens of poetical 
imagery are quoted : — 

" The commentary on Shakespeare by Gervinus 
reminds one of the Roman Campagna, penetrated 
underground in all directions by strange winding 
caverns, the work of human borers in search of we 
know not what. Above are the divine poet's larks 
and daisies, his incommunicable skies, his broad 
prospects of life and nature ; and meanwhile our 
Teutonic teredo worms his way below, and offers to 
be our guide into an obscurity of his own creating." 

" The German Language has such a fatal genius 
for going stern-foremost, for yawing, and for not 
minding the helm without some ten minutes' notice 
in advance, that he must be a great sailor indeed 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 145 

who can safely make it the vehicle for anything but 
imperishable commodities." 

" Wordsworth wrote too much to write always 
well ; for it is not a great Xerxes-army of Avords, 
but a compact Greek ten thousand that march 
safely down to posterity." 

" The best of Schiller's lyrical poems find no 
match in modern verse for rapid energy, — the 
very axles of language kindling with swiftness." 

" Chaucer's best tales run on like one of our 
inland rivers, sometimes hastening a little and 
turning upon themselves in eddies that dimple 
without retarding the current ; sometimes loitering 
smoothly, while here and there a quiet thought, a 
tender feeling, a pleasant image, a golden-hearted 
verse, opens quietly as a water-lily, to float on the 
surface without breaking it into ripple." 

As some stress has been laid upon the 

poetical ornaments of the style, or rather, 

it might be said, upon the diffusion of golden 

grains of poetry through the quartz of prose, 

it should be again stated more emphatically 

that the literary essays are chiefly valuable 

10 



146 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

for tlieir clear thought and their varied and 
splendid learning. Let any student read the 
essay on Chaucer, and then consider where 
he can find its parallel ! It is not merely 
a specimen of magnificent writing: it is a 
compact and lucid account of the origin and 
growth of English poetry, with a series of 
brilliant characterizations ; and it is such an 
account as no historian or critic has made. 
The antiquarian scholars have the literal 
facts at command ; but no one possessed of 
the necessary erudition has had at the same 
time the power of raising literary annals into 
aesthetic history. Taine's treatment of the 
same period is characteristically pretentious, 
sentimental, and shallow. 

We can see evidences of the same thorough 
preparation in the other essays. Lowell 
has never trusted to ''style" to carry him 
tlu'ough : not Dryasdust himself could have 
had the details of the subject more at com- 
mand. So it may be asserted, in general, 
that each essay contains the latest thought as 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 147 

well as the most complete information. All 
of tliem are redolent of learning, and all have 
an incommunicable flavor. The treatment 
of Dryden is able and masterly ; albeit his 
numerous apostasies are too leniently dealt 
with. Spenser is the subject of an essay 
scarcely inferior to that upon Chaucer, and 
equally indispensable to students of English 
literature. 

Dante seems to be a literature in himself, 
and none but devoted students have the right 
to judge hin?, or the essays upon him. It 
may be observed that most who have 
studied Dante profoundly have become in 
the end conservatives in religion, if not Cath- 
ohcs. The circle of his admirers is neces- 
sarily small. Lowell's essay is evidently 
a tribute of affection ; and as the esti- 
mate- of a poet, it is worthy of respectful 
study. It exhibits the results of protracted 
thought upon the highest themes which have 
occupied the mind of man. 

But of all the series, the one entitled 



148 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

'' Shakespeare Once More " is doubtless the 
best. There will always be some new light 
radiating from the works of the greatest of 
poets, and each succeeding generation will 
be satisfied only with its own estimate ; but 
the most comprehensive estimate of Shakes- 
peare to-day is Lowell's. 

The essays of Lowell, it must be admitted, 
have not the elements of general popularity. 
Criticism in its highest form is not attractive 
except to thinkers. The few essays that are 
widely read — like Macaulay's and Carlyle's 
— are studies of historical characters, or of 
great epochs, with graphic personal descrip- 
tions and parallels, treated in a highly- 
wrought style of rhetoric. In fact, the 
ordinary critical essays, unless there is a 
personal flavor in them, such as we perceive 
in Montaigne and in the '' Autocrat of the 
Breakfast Table," are as short-lived as the 
reign of a London beauty. The changes in 
literary fashion soon make the critic obsolete. 
Except as curiosities, who cares now for the 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. I49 

opinions of Lockhart, Jeffrey, Mackintosh, 
Gifford, and tlie rest 1 The tables are turned. 
Byron, Keats, Shell-ey, Coleridge, and Words- 
worth now " compute " their reviewers. In 
general, it may be said that the quality which 
prevents the general appreciation of Lowell's 
prose is its exceeding richness. It is like 
cloth of gold, — too splendid and too cum- 
brous for every-day wear. 

It is upon his poems that the sure foun- 
dation of Lowell's fame will rest. Some of 
them are the clear and fortunate expression 
of the noblest modern thought, and others 
are imbedded in the history of an eventful 
time. When the relative perspective of his- 
tory is adjusted, Lincoln's proclamation of 
freedom to the slave will tower in importance. 
The elders are perhaps weary of the topic, 
but the vindication of the anti-slavery agi- 
tators and poets may be safely left to Time. 



150 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

PEESONAL TRAITS AND ANECDOTES. 

In person Lowell is of medium height, 
rather slender, but sinewy and active. His 
movements are deliberate rather than imjoul- 
sive, indicating what athletes call staying 
qualities. His hair at maturity was dark 
auburn or ruddy chestnut in color, and his 
full beard rather lighter and more glowing in 
tint. The eyes of men of genius are seldom 
to be classified in ordinary terms, though it 
is said their prevailing color is gray. Colonel 
Higginson mentions Hawthorne's gray eyes ; 
while the present writer, who once studied 
them attentively, found them mottled gray 
and brown, and at that time indescribably 
soft and winning. That they were some- 
times accipitral we can readily believe. 
Lowell's eyes in repose have clear blue and 
gray tones, with minute dark mottlings. In 
expression they are strongly indicative of his 
moods. When fixed upon study, or while 
listening to serious discourse, they are grave 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 151 

and penetrating; in ordinary conversation 
they are bright and cheery ; in moments of 
excitement they have a wonderful lustre. 
Nothing could be finer than his facial expres- 
sion while telling a story or tossing a repartee. 
The features are alive with intelligence ; and 
eyes, looks, and voice appear to be working 
up dazzling effects in concert, like the finished 
artists of the Comedie FranQaise. 

The wit of Hosea Biglow is the native wit 
of Lowell, — instantaneous as lightning ; and 
Hosea's common sense is Lowell's birthright, 
too. When the same man, moreover, can 
extemporize chuckling puns, or blow out a 
breath of poetical reverie as naturally as the 
smoke from his pipe, the combination be- 
comes almost marvellous. Other men may 
have been as witty, though we recall but 
three or four in our day ; some may have 
had a similar fund of wisdom mellowed with 
humor ; others have talked the staple of idyls, 
and let off metaphors like soap-bubbles ; but 
Lowell combines in conversation the varied 



152 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

powers of all. His resources are inexhausti- 
ble. It is no wonder that he has been ad- 
mired ; for at his best he is one of the most 
fascinating of men. There is but one com- 
peer, — the immortal Autocrat, — and it 
would be difficult and perhaps impossible to 
draw a parallel between them. 

Steele said of a lady, that to have known 
and loved her was a liberal education. More 
than one man who enjoyed Lowell's society 
found that the wise and witty converse of 
years did much to supply lamented defects 
in his own study and training, and perhaps 
warmed even late-flowering plants into blos- 
som and fruitage. This also should be said, 
that every man who has known Lowell well 
considers him much greater than the aggre- 
gate of his works. He always gives the im- 
pression of power in reserve, and of the 
probability of still higher achievement. 

He used to enter upon tlie long walks 
which have aided in making him one of the 
poets of nature with the keenest zest. There 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 153 

was no quicker eye for a bird or squirrel, a 
rare flower or bush, and no more accurate 
ear for tlie songs or the commoner sounds of 
the forest. Evidences of this the reader will 
find in the '' Study Windows." But those 
who have visited Fresh Pond, Clematis 
Brook, Love Lane, or the Waverley Oaks 
in his company remember an acuteness of 
vision and a delight in every form of beauty 
of which the essay gives no conception. 

His habits have been scarcely methodical, 
— reading, correspondence, composition, ex- 
ercise, and social converse coming often hap- 
hazard, — yet, being incapable of idleness, 
he has accomplished much. His reading has 
been enormous, covering the literature of 
many countries and times : from Marco Polo 
to Doctor Kane ; from Piers Plowman to 
Swinburne; from the Christian Fathers to 
Channing; from Boccaccio and Cervantes 
to Thackeray ; from Froissart to Motley ; — 
and this has given him the materials indis- 
pensable to a great writer. His works show 



154 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

the effective use he has made of the intel- 
lectual treasures of the world. 

Mrs. Hawthorne relates that before her hus- 
band completed '' The Scarlet Letter " thej'e 
was a visible knot in the muscles of his fore- 
head, caused by the intensity of thought. 
When a great theme was in mind, Lowell 
used always to go to his desk with all his 
might. Like Sir Walter Raleigh, he could 
"toil terribly." It has been already men- 
tioned that "Sir Launfal" was written in 
about two days. The production of a poem 
like "The Cathedral" or the Commemoration 
Ode taxed his faculties to the utmost, and 
always left him exhausted in body and mind. 
At such periods his wife and daughter, know- 
ing his nature and needs, used various arti- 
fices to divert him, and prevent the strain 
becoming too tense. 

THE WHIST CLUB. 

Between 1850 and 1860, Lowell was not 
much in society, in the present restricted 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 155 

sense of the word. Dinner parties and recep- 
tions of tlie fashionable world appeared to 
have little attraction for him. He never 
enjoyed being honized. In Cambridge there 
were several men with whom he was on in- 
timate terms, and to them he gave his society 
migrudgingly. Chief among these was his 
brother-in-law, Dr. Estes Howe, a man of 
liberal education and delightful social quali- 
ties. He is '' The Doctor" referred to in the 
preface to the " Fable for Critics." " The 
Don" was a pleasant nickname for Mr. Robert 
Carter, formerly Lowell's coadjutor in the 
short-lived " Pioneer," and employed at that 
time as secretary by Mr. Prescott, the his- 
torian. Carter was a remarkable man, prin- 
cipally on account of his great reading and 
retentive memory. He was an able writer 
also, but he had read more out-of-the-way 
things than any man living. Lowell used to 
say that he would back Carter on a wager 
to write off-hand an account of a journey 
in the fifth century B. C. from Rome to 



156 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

Babylon or Peldn, with descriptions of all. 
the peoples on the way. Carter lived at first 
in a modest house near the Willows (cele- 
brated in Lowell's verse), and afterwards in 
Sparks Street, not far from the Riedesel 
House. The Sparks Street house has asso- 
ciations such as belong to the tavern of 
Kit North's friend Ambrose, — lacking, how- 
ever, the overplus of toddy and the coarse- 
ness which smirched the discourse of the 
Blackwood coterie. Carter's house was often 
a rendezvous for whist parties. But whist 
was the least of the business or pleasure 
of the evening. The new books, — or old 
ones, — magazines, pictures, reminiscences, 
and stories occupied the available intervals. 
The silence and severity of Mrs. Battles was 
unknown. Charles Lamb and his venerable 
dame were often quoted by Lowell, but the 
" rigor of the game " was a transparent joke. 
When a story came to mind, or an epigram, 
or double-shotted pun, the cards might wait ; 
when the story was told, or the puns had cor- 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 157 

ruscated amid roars of laughter, the professor 
would blandly ask, " Wliat are trumps ? " 

Other players must rest in shadow. Two 
of them may be named in whom the reading- 
world has an interest. One was John Bart- 
lett, author of the book of ''Familiar Quota- 
tions," a charming companion, and a man of 
refined taste. The other, who was the de- 
light of all companies, was John Holmes, 
brother of the poet-professor. He was the 
songless poet, the silent Autocrat. It is diffi- 
cult to say what he might have done if shut 
up with pen, ink, and paper ; but he had the 
rarest humor and a genius for the unexpected. 
He always had the art of showing the other 
side of a statement, and of bringing a joke 
out of the impossible, like a conjurer. 

Changes in the whist parties occuiTed, as 
was natural, owing to illness or absence ; 
but they continued for several years. The 
members are all living except Carter, who 
died in Cambridge about a year ago, univer- 
sally regretted. May he rest in peace ! The 



158 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

recollections of that period form a bond not 
to be sundered while life and thought con- 
tinue. 

Of the other friends of Lowell much mio-ht 
be said if there were room. Some of them 
are named in his books. 

HINTS OF FRIENDSHIPS. 

The edition of poems published In 1849 
was affectionately dedicated to the eminent 
painter, William Page. The second series 
of the "Biglow Papers" was appropriately 
inscribed to E. R Hoar, who is 

" the Jedge, who covers with his hat 
More vdi an' gumption an' shrewd Yankee sense 
Than there is mosses on an ole stone fence." 

'' Fireside Travels " is a series of letters ad- 
dressed to Story, the scul23tor. " Under the 
Willows" bears the name of Charles Eliot 
Norton, Professor of the History of Art at 
Cambridge ; '' The Cathedral " is inscribed 
to Mr. James T. Fields ; '' Three Memorial 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 159 

Poems," to Mr. E. L. Grodkin, editor of the 
''Nation; " '' My Stiid}^ Windows," to Francis 
J. Child, Professor of English Literature ; 
" Among My Books," to the present Mrs. 
Lowell ; the second volmne of the same se- 
ries to the illustrious Emerson. The chief 
honor appears to have been paid to Greorge 
William Curtis, to whom the complete edi- 
tion of poetical works is dedicated. 

Arthur Hugh Clough, an English scholar 
and poet, lived in Cambridge for about a 
year (1855), and appears to have made a 
deep impression upon Lowell. The un- 
learned public knows little of Clough ; but 
all poets know the author of '' The Bothie " 
and " Qua Cur sum Ventus,''^ and cultivated 
people know the charming memoir of the 
author by Professor Norton. He had a 
beautiful, spiritual face and delicate, shy 
manners ; such a face and such manners as 
are dimly seen in morning dreams. One 
may be sure that such a rare being, if real 
flesh and blood, would at some time be found 



160 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

at Elmwood. Cloiigh strongly advised Low- 
ell to continue and develop the Yankee pas- 
torals. In the introduction to the " Bisrlow 
Papers," Lowell says, apropos of the approval 
of friends : '' With a feeling too tender and 
grateful to be mixed with any vanity, I men- 
tion as one of these the late A. H. Clough, 
who more than any one of those I have 
known (no longer living), except Hawthorne, 
impressed me with the constant presence of 
that indefinable thing we call genius." 

The artists Stillman and Rowse were fre- 
quent visitors. Many of their pictures and 
sketches adorn Lowell's house. 

Cranch the poet and painter was a fre- 
quent and welcome visitor. President Felton 
was a stanch friend, and had great delight 
in Lowell's society. He and his brother-in- 
law, Agassiz, w^ere alike hearty and natural 
men, fond of social pleasure, and manifesting 
the unaffected simplicity of children. Few 
men have won such deserved distinction in 
science and letters, and retained the freshness 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 161 

of youthful feeling. At the club, Agassiz 
was generally the centre of interest ; for his 
vast knowledge enabled him always to fur- 
nish some ready and pertinent analogue. 

Longfellow's house is but a short distance 
from Elmwood, perhaps a quarter of a mile ; 
and the relations of the two poets have 
always been intimate, as every observant 
reader knows. Holmes lives in Boston ; but 
he was a frequent visitor in Cambridge at 
the old house near the college, especially 
while his mother lived. Lowell always paid 
tribute to the consummate art and finish of 
his friendly rival's verses, and to the vigor 
and freshness of his style. The father of^ 
Dr. Holmes was a stout Orthodox clergyman ; 
Lowell's father was a mild and conservative 
Unitarian. The Autocrat has developed into 
a liberal, and our poet has been growing 
more conservative, until now the relative 
positions of the sons are nearly the reverse 
of those of their fathers. 



11 



162 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

A CHARACTER. 

Among the strange and remarkable people 
that come to mind, Count Gurowski may 
be mentioned. That brilliant and eccentric 
man, in exile from his beloved Russia, was 
engaged to deliver a course of lectures on 
the civil law at the Universit}^ His habit 
of unsparing censure soon got him into diffi- 
cult3\ The tongue which Russian nobles and 
dames had dreaded tvoulcl wag in Cambridge. 
" Humbug " and " ass " were the mildest 
terms he could find for some of the pro- 
fessors. His engagement was terminated, and 
Jiie shortly after disappeared. His singular 
figure, his undaunted look, and his old-world 
garments had made him a conspicuous object, 
and he was missed. He was too proud to 
ask for help, even for a sixpence. He pre- 
feiTed to starve. The generous Carter un- 
dertook to look him up, and after a long 
search found him digging in Hovey's nursery 
grounds, at a dollar a day. He was wretched, 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 163 

because old and unused to manual labor. 
Carter took him to his house, and kept him 
until some turn of fortune put the former 
statesman and diplomatist on his feet again. 
While he was at Carter's house a meeting of 
the whist club occurred. Gurowski could 
not say enough to Carter's friends of his 
gratitude to the man who he declared had 
saved his life. But in the course of the even- 
ing he said a great deal more. He attacked 
everybody and everything. He combated 
modern philosophy, scouted modern history, 
and belittled modern poets. He was the 
autocrat of all the Russias, and of mankind 
in general. The lustre of his remaining eye 
(its fellow had been quenched in a duel) was 
fascinating, and held his audience like Cole- 
ridge's Ancient Mariner. He bore down upon 
the company like a full-rigged ship in a trade 
wind, with all sails set. He would have no 
contradiction. Sic volo, sic juheo. Lowell 
interposed now and then some bright and 
apposite remarks, but Gurowski tolerated no 



164 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

criticism or qualification. In the conflict of 
impetuous talk he was the Missouri bearing 
the current of the clearer and g-entler Mis- 
sissippi away to the oj^posite shore. His 
command of English, like Kossuth's, was 
miraculous, and the foreign accent was an 
attraction rather than impediment. But, of 
course, he was arbitrary and unjust to the last 
degree ; and his triumph was not one of logic, 
for he talked for victory only. Such an ex- 
hibition was an experience of a lifetime. To 
be sure, it settled no facts nor principles, but 
it gave one an idea of the vast resoiu'ces of a 
great mind under the guidance of a moody 
and wayward temper. 

EDMUND QUmCY. 

Edmund Quincy, son of the eminent presi- 
dent of Harvard, a man of education, taste, 
and wealth, was one of the foremost of the 
early abolitionists, and a ready and indus- 
trious writer upon the great question of his 
day. He was an early and intimate friend 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 165 

of Lowell, and tlieir visits were frequent. 
Mr. Quincy had a large and comfortable 
house, of the style of a century ago, at 
Dedham, near the Charles. There was a 
noble grove of pine-trees in the rear, ex- 
tending to the river's edge. The estate was 
called Bankside. Mr. Quincy is commemo- 
rated in a fine poem under this title. There 
is a reference to it, also, in " The Cathe- 
dral." Mr. Quincy took a warm interest 
in the " Atlantic," having been one of the 
original coterie of fourteen. He contrib- 
uted no long articles ; but several book 
notices are still remembered for their pun- 
gent wit and epigrammatic force. He died 
a few years ago, and it is permitted now 
to say that few more elegant and accom- 
plished men have ever been reared in Mas- 
sachusetts. His manners were courtly and 
refined, never cold or formal. His address 
was graceful, and his courtesy imfailing. 
Lowell used to say that, if we had an aris- 
tocracy, Quincy would be a duke. A visit 



166 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

to Bankside in the old days was something 
to be remembered. 



BEGINS PUBLIC LIFE AT THE TOP. 

In the course of this sketch there has been 
Httle attemjDt to follow order. The events of 
Lowell's life since 1860 have been few. The 
important dates are the dates of his books. 
One year has been like another, passed at 
the same residence, cheered by the same 
friends, engrossed in the same studies and 
pleasures. He visited Europe with Mrs. 
Lowell in 1873. He had never held office, 
not even that of justice of the peace ; and 
though he has always had a warm interest 
in public affairs, he has not been a politician. 
It was therefore with some surprise as well 
as gratification that his friends heard of his 
appointment as Minister to Spain. He had 
been offered the Austrian mission, and had 
declined it ; but some good spirit, perhaps Mr. 
Ho wells (a relative of President Hayes), sug- 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 167 

gested that Vienna was perliaps not tlie place 
to attract a scholar and poet, and that Ma- 
drid would be preferable, even with a smaller 
salary. After the retirement of Mr. Welsh, 
minister to England, Mr. Lowell was trans- 
ferred to London. His reception in the 
metropolis of letters and of English-speaking 
people has been in the highest degree cor- 
dial and lionorable. 

He still holds his rank as professor at 
Cambridge, evidently expecting to resume 
his duties there. Perhaps in the Indian sum- 
mer of his life he may put his heart into a 
poem that will be even more worthy of his 
genius than any he has yet written. 



University Press : John Wilson & Son, Cambridge. 




QQ0e2b'?2332 




